Planet Free-Office

Open Source

Open Source House: designing eco-affordable housing together

Open Source House (OS-House) is a non-profit organization that aims to provide better, more sustainable housing in low-income countries. 8 Design principles are utilized by OS-House to guarantee standards of sustainability, and meet the challenge of flexibility, ensuring that all designs can be locally embedded. Establish your name, and contribute your ideas and designs in our first design competition starting on the 15th of January 2010. The competition results will be shared on the OS-House platform thereby marking the beginning of this ongoing project.

Hundreds flock to open source software conference
The National Business Review – New Zealand / Kelly Gregor

Hundreds of technology enthusiasts from around the world will attend a week-long open source software conference that began in Wellington today. More 700 delegates are expected to attend the Linux conference, which will discuss the future and viability of open source software and its implications for governments and businesses.

Games

Searching for gold: how to fund your indie video game
Ars Technica / Michael Thompson

It’s never easy to secure financial support for an independent game project, but it’s even harder right now. Ars takes a look at some different ways to get funding for your project.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Games, Linux, News, Open Source.
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What's all this about?  Find out here

On the morning of Sunday, December 12, a morbidly obese Corgi named Lily was sniffing a tree on 16sh street, in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C.  A cold, insistent drizzle was falling, but Lily didn’t care, because Lily was sniffing at her favo...

Here’s a another press release from today involving IBM, Symphony, Lotus Live, Ubuntu Linux, and Virtual Bridges. We’re continuing the rollout of the partner-led IBM Client for Smart Work:

IBM Client for Smart Work Available Through Business Partners in India

ORLANDO, FL & BANGALORE, India – 18 Jan 2010: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the immediate availability of IBM Client for Smart Work in India through business partners. The IBM Client for Smart Work, IBM and Canonical’s popular cloud-and Linux-based desktop package, is designed to help companies do more with less and lower desktop computing costs by up to 50 percent. CIO’s, IT directors and IT architects from all types of organizations in India, even those that typically cannot afford new PCs, can now gain immediate access to collaboration capabilities to help them work smarter, with the simple download of the IBM Client for Smart Work onto various thin clients, such as netbooks and other devices.

“Government leaders, CEOs and CIOs are seeking an open, cost effective and collaboration rich client strategy to leapfrog into the 21st century,” said Pradeep Nair, director of IBM India Software Group. “The IBM Client for Smart Work solution brings together the strengths of cloud-based collaboration, virtual desktops, netbook devices and open source, supported by a strong ecosystem of business partners, to help Indian innovators harness the next wave of growth.”

The collaboration package runs on Ubuntu Linux operating system available from Canonical and provides the option to deliver collaboration through the Web in a cloud service model. The Client comes with IBM Lotus Symphony, IBM LotusLive iNotes/Connections and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, with the option to add IBM Lotus Connections and IBM WebSphere Portal, as well as virtual desktop capabilities using VERDE from Virtual Bridges.

With the mounting interest in this solution, IBM today also announced that Simmtronics Semiconductors will ship their new Simmbooks (netbooks) with IBM Client for Smart Work on Ubuntu already preloaded to clients in India, US, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, UK, and Vietnam.” We launched Simmbooks based on the high demand for netbook type devices for enterprises worldwide,” said Indrajit Sabharwal, managing director, Simmtronics Semiconductors. “Delivering Simmbooks with IBM Client for Smart Work on Ubuntu will help our customers lower their total cost of ownership and be on the forefront of innovation.”

…

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Cloud, Linux, News.
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Canonical announced the following today via a press release:

Canonical Offers Dedicated Support Program for Lotus Symphony, the Core Component of IBM Client for Smart Work on Ubuntu

Canonical today announced a dedicated support program for Lotus Symphony, the no-charge office productivity alternative which is a core component of IBM Client for Smart Work (ICSW) on Ubuntu.

(PRWEB) January 18, 2010 — Canonical today announced a dedicated support program for Lotus Symphony, the no-charge office productivity alternative which is a core component of IBM Client for Smart Work (ICSW) on Ubuntu. This support is made available to customers by Canonical through the IBM and Canonical partner network. Organisations can now switch to an alternative platform from Microsoft for their business productivity needs with full confidence that the core solution is fully supported.

The IBM Client for Smart Work, based on IBM productivity and collaboration software, helps organisations save up to 50 percent per seat on software costs versus a Microsoft-based desktop, in addition to avoiding requisite hardware upgrades. The package allows companies to use their existing PCs, lower-cost netbooks and thin clients.

…

See the press release for the rest of the announcement.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Linux, News.
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Here’s the next round of photos from Lotusphere 2010.

Here’s Peter Woodward of Canonical/Ubuntu and me. Light could have been better, but you take what you can get in a meeting room.

Next is our friendly penguin friend sporting an “IBM Client for Smart Work” label. Get yours starting tomorrow at the Lotus Knows challenge immediately upon entering the exhibit hall at the bottom of the escalator.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Photos, Travel.
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Here are a couple of photographs taken very early at Lotusphere 2010 at Disney World in Florida this week and they are, perhaps, a bit different.

This was a lonely hammock by the beach looking toward the Grand Floridian Resort. The weather was very overcast and it threatened to rain for seeral hours before it finally did around 9 PM. There were some people walking around because, well, it is Florida, though not too many were swimming in the pool.

This pen, a give-away in the exhibit area for the IBM Client for Smart Work on Linux, is made from corn starch and is biodegradable. Get yours before they go in the compost pile.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Photos, Travel.
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Virtual Worlds

Power users holding back Second Life?
Hypergrid Business / Maria Korolov

Second Life is being held back by an “elite group” of users, according to Forrester Research, Inc. analyst Tom Grant. There is an “Iron Law of Oligarchy,” Grant wrote this week. “Over time, a subset of customers emerge who participate regularly in user group meetings, discussion forums, the comments sections of blogs, groups in social media channels, and other channels of face-to-face and electronic communication.”

Music

Nils Lofgren Online Guitar School

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Music, News, Virtual Worlds.
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The ground is blanketed in snow, and will remain so for most of the next 3 months. The temperature ranges from cold to frigid. It is hard to think of spring, but now is the time when the garden planning begins, when I start making lists, drawing plot diagrams, calculating planting times, and anticipating, in my mind, the eventual blooms of summer and the harvest of next fall.

This is also the time when my mailbox fills up with catalogs from plantsmen and nurseries, offering new cultivars, rediscovered heirloom varieties and all manner of new garden gadgets.  When possible I prefer to support local nurseries.  Their plants are chosen to be well-adapted for my regional conditions.  Of course, the downside is that if you buy locally, then you’ll be buying the same plants as your neighbors, and who wants to have their landscaping look the same as everyone else on the street?

Of the dozens of catalogs I receive every winter, there are a few that I return to year after year, the ones where I find the immense variety I crave,  as well as high quality service.  The following is my “top 10 list” of seed and plant catalogs suitable for New England:

1. Fedco Seeds (Maine)   Their new 137 page catalog covers seeds, tubers and organic growing supplies.  The emphasis is on hardy and short-season varieties suitable for northern gardens.
2. Nourse Farms (Massachusetts) Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries live plants, including new introductions.  They are my first choice for berries.
3. Territorial Seed Company (Oregon)  Very informative catalog, 167 pages, should be a model for others.  Clearly indicates which seeds are open pollinated, which are F1 hybrids, which are organic, disease resistance, days to maturity, etc.   Most seeds are available in different packet sizes, ranging from small samplers to larger packets for small commercial growers.
4. Artistic Gardens / Le Jardin du Gourmet (Vermont)   Their 50 Sample Herb Packet Special is a regular annual purchase for me.  At any other seed company you pay $3 or so for a packet containing enough basil seeds for a pesto factory.  Total overkill for a mall garden, and expensive if you want to plant a wide variety of herbs.   But for a very reasonable price Le Jardin du Gourmet offers a bundle of  50 herb seed packets, each very small, but providing “just enough” seeds for my small garden.  You have no control over the variety, so if you absolutely must have Genovese Basil, this is not for you, but in turn for giving up control over the variety you get large selection of culinary and traditional medicinal herbs for a very reasonable price.  I find it also gets me to grow herbs I might not otherwise try, like lovage or horehound.
5. Seed Savers Exchange (Iowa) This is the open source project of the seed world.  Individual amateur gardeners and small farms preserving 12,613 varieties of heirloom, ethnic and unique vegetable varieties, growing from seed, and harvesting and preserving the seed to pass on to the next year.  The resulting huge diversity of seeds are shared with members for the cost of postage. The variety is staggering.  If they don’t have it,  it probably doesn’t exist (or is protected by a plant patent).  A subset of the most popular heirloom varieties is for sale on their website, but to get the full phonebook-thick catalog of member-offered seeds, you need to join.
6. White Flower Farm (Connecticut)  The catalog, fully photographed in luscious detail, is a feast for the eyes.  Strong on perennials (herbaceous and woody) and bulbs.  I use it as much to generate ideas as I do for ordering.
7. Johnny’s Selected Seeds (Maine)  I go to Johnny’s especially for their new vegetable variety introductions.  For example, they introduced “Bright Lights” Swiss chard, one of my favorites.   Their catalog always has something new to look forward to.
8. Raintree Nursery (Washington) If you want something unusual in the fruit department, this is where to go.  From medlars to hardy kiwi to saskatoons, they have it.  Their catalog has also the cultural information you need to be successful, including recommendations on compatible pollinators.
9. Bluestone Perennials (Ohio) Along with the White Flower Farm catalog, this is my main source for perennials.  The PlantFinder search engine on their website is great for finding plants for a special niche, like “Zone 6 hardy, deer resistant groundcovers with blue flowers”.
10. Totally Tomato (Wisconsin)  The name says it all.  If you want a specific tomato variety and no substitute will do, this is the place to go.  For example, their catalog lists 41 different cherry tomato varieties.  This is the “long tail” of the lycopersicum world.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Maria Rodale: It’s Time to Order Seeds (huffingtonpost.com)
• Almost Spring, in my dreams (sutor.com)

Related posts:

1. Pruning Raspberries
2. Fruits of the Season: Notes on my Berry Patch

So you’ve heard about this great piece of open source software and you are considering either contributing to it or using it a very serious way, maybe even a business critical way. What are some of the questions you should be asking about the project?

• Is it good code and is it well architected?
• Who are the founders, contributors, and users?
• What are the motivations and behavior of each?
• What is the form and governance of the community?
• Is there a single dominant player that is controlling the direction or is it a more democratic community?
• Are there intellectual property issues involving copyrights or code provenance?
• What about that license?

You need the confidence that the code and the community that supports it is fit for your purpose, are sufficiently stable, and have no “gotchas.” That is, there should be no surprises around the intellectual property involved and no unexpected strangeness around the community and its leadership.

What other things do you look for and what other advice you would give along these lines?

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Open Source.
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Linux

Another day, another SUSE/Moblin Linux netbook
ComputerWorld / Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

In all the hurly-burly of CES, a second SUSE/Moblin Linux netbook was quietly released. This one comes from Samsung.

Red Hat repurchases $33.4M of shares
Triangle Business Journal

Red Hat repurchased more than 1 million shares of company stock for $33.4 million from Dec. 1 through Jan. 8, the company revealed in filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Entertainment

Now, Electronics That Obey Hand Gestures
The New York Times / Ashlee Vance

In the coming months, the likes of Microsoft, Hitachi and major PC makers will begin selling devices that will allow people to flip channels on the TV or move documents on a computer monitor with simple hand gestures. The technology, one of the most significant changes to human-device interfaces since the mouse appeared next to computers in the early 1980s, was being shown in private sessions during the immense Consumer Electronics Show here last week. Past attempts at similar technology have proved clunky and disappointing. In contrast, the latest crop of gesture-powered devices arrives with a refreshing surprise: they actually work.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Entertainment, Linux, News, Open Source.
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An application isn't complete without good documentation. Those fine folks at Linux Format docked a lot of points from Gimp when they reviewed their new release because the manual wasn't updated yet... Krita 1.6 had a pretty fine manual for a free software application, but given that Krita 2.2 is going to be so much better than 1.6, the manual should be ace, too. And almost nothing from the 1.6 manual is still usable, there have been so many changes.

We have to rewrite, and make it even better this time. There is no way I can do this on my and code, it's got to be a collaborative effort. And there should be video tutorials, as well, as part of the manual. So... Enter userbase.kde.org. It's the perfect central place for efforts of this kind. I've started an outline for a new Krita manual, a manual with more than just a description of every menu option and dialog, but one that focusses on concepts, getting things done.

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Also: the first Last Week in krita of 2010 is out!

Open Source

Novell lose[s] Open Source CTSO as Nat Friedman leaves
The H Open Source: News and Features

Nat Friedman, co-founder of Ximian and Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source at Novell has announced in a blog posting that he has quit. Friedman, who co-founded Ximinan with Miguel de Icaza in 1999, joined Novell in 2003 when the company acquired Ximian. Since then he has headed up Novell’s open source strategy

A Few Resources for Women in Open Source
ITworld / Esther Schindler

When I first started programming in high school at age 15 (on a mainframe), I was one of only two or three girls in the class of perhaps 20 students. At the time, I thought that was a pretty good ratio. God knows that I never lacked for a date. Ever since then, however, I’ve been doing my best to encourage more women to get into the field. Not because I believe that the computer industry arbitrarily needs to have a one-to-one ratio, but because I love computing so very much and I want to share that excitement. My enthusiasm extends to the open source community as well.

Games

LEGO Universe – colorful plastic’s answer to World of Warcraft – is the brainchild of Colorado-based NetDevil
Denver News

In this sprawling realm of bricks and minifigs, hundreds of thousands of players will get to explore moon bases and castles and many other subjects covered by LEGO toys over the years, taking on massing forces of chaos and destruction

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Games, News, Open Source.
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Think of the words "standards war," and unless you're a standards wonk like m...oh, never mind...you're likely to think of the battle between the Betamax and VHS video tape formats.  That's because videos are consumer products that just about everyone uses, and therefore the bloodshed in that standards war was not only shed in public view, but the some of the blood that was shed was shed by the public (i.e., those that bought video players supporting Betamax, the losing, but arguably superior, format).  Fast forward (pun intended) to the present, and the trademarks "HD DVD and "Blu-ray" may ring a bell - and that's no coincidence.
...

Late yesterday afternoon I trudged from the car through the snow to a Home Depot to pick up a few things for a home project. After getting inside and shaking off the snow, I was met with a wonderful display of seeds for the garden.

Around here, we can’t plant anything outside until May, and it’s usually late May at that. However, after the problems last year with the tomato blight, I decided to start my own seeds for some vegetables for this year’s garden. Therefore at some point I was planning on getting those seeds.

It’s certainly economical to do so: a pack of tomato seeds yielding one to two dozen plants is less than $2. To jump to the punchline, I did buy some seeds. I got 2 varieties of hot peppers, two of sweet peppers, two of basil, and four of tomatoes.

I’m not going to put plants from all the seeds into the garden, but since I’m not planting corn this year (the raccoons got all of it), I have a lot of extra room. So I might do half a dozen of each of the tomato and pepper varieties and then a lot of basil, most of it to be used for pesto. I’ll also plant other vegetables like lettuce, peas, and beans, but I’ll run through there when I publish the post mortem on last year’s garden.

Note that while I bought these seeds on impulse, my final selection of plants to start will be developed over the next couple of months. In particular, I’ll be looking at some organic seed providers such as High Mowing Seeds, based in Hardwick, VT. This company was featured in a one hour Emeril Green special in early January, 2010.

I’ll need to start the seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before they must go outside, so that puts the date around April 1. I have some work to do before then on this project, primarily figuring out where I’ll put the seeds and how to set up a grow light. It’s all fun, and all helps the winter go by faster.

Also see: “Getting ready for Spring gardening in upstate NY” for suppliers of gardening supplies, plants, and seeds.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Home.
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Linux

Red Hat CEO On Recession, Virtualization, Ballmer
InformationWeek / Charles Babcock

Whitehurst said many Linux conversions have been from Unix in the past, but during the recession, “more and more conversions [come] from Windows users.” Red Hat Enterprise Linux now runs on 15% of the servers in the data center, he said. (Microsoft sees Windows Server on 70% of new servers in the data center.) Customers are coming to Linux “we say because of its high value. But it is open source and lower cost,” which has a distinct appeal in hard times, he noted.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Linux, News.
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I use my Lenovo T400 Thinkpad as a work laptop but also as an experimental machine on which I put and delete various Linux distributions and software. At various times I’ve had Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE on the computer, though most often Ubuntu, and that’s what is there now.

Because I always seem to be in the state of configuring and testing the machine, I don’t usually take it on the road with me, because I don’t think of it as stable. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but I haven’t always thoroughly made sure I put everything on it that I might need and then test it.

So after about a dozen of these cycles of install, configure, install something else, reconfigure, I’ve decided that I’m going to keep just one distro on it and live with it for a few months, both in my home office and on the road. The distro I’m using now is Ubuntu 9.10 and I’ll keep it for a while.

I’ve used the machine set up this way on and off since October, but since the beginning of the week it has been configured for work. Here are a few observations, especially with respect to my various work on the desktop in earlier installments.

• I don’t really need an automatic wallpaper changer since I rarely see the screen background on the laptop.
• For some reason I can’t get Ubuntu to connect to my Snow Leopard iMac printer, though at various times in the past it has worked. There should be a button that says “connect to you Mac printer” – it is still too hard.
• I’m still getting the hang of using multiple workspaces under GNOME, and I think the Mac probably handles the notion more smoothly. I should use Ctrl-Alt-Tab or something to find my apps more quickly. Wish I could get all open apps to appear on all workpace lower panels. (A setting somewhere?)
  Update and solution from Brian Warner: Right click on the double dotted line handle to the left of the minimized windows in the bottom panel and choose Preferences. Then select “Show windows for all workspaces”.
• Generally, I’m feeling that there is more clutter than I would like when I have all my apps and a dozen Firefox tabs open. Time for a rethink. Is this just in contrast to the Mac or am I not working optimally on the given desktop?
  Update: The Tree Style Tab Firefox addon provides nice functionality to put the tabs on the sides and automatically shrink the tab bar.

Also see: Life with Linux: The series

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Linux.
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Linux

MSI Ships First Netbook Powered By SUSE Moblin From Novell
Novell, Inc.

Addressing the growing demand for lightweight, mobile netbook devices, MSI and Novell today announced the upcoming availability of SUSE® Moblin preloaded on the MSI U135 netbook. Following the recent release of Moblin(TM) version 2.1, this marks the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to sell a fully-supported Intel® Atom processor-based netbook running Moblin-based technology to consumers.

The next generation of Linux notebooks arrives at CES
ComputerWorld / Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

The major computer vendors are once more embracing Linux as HP and Lenovo both announce models with desktop Linux pre-installed and rumor is there’s more to come.

How (and Why) to Partition Your Hard Drive – washingtonpost.com
The Washington Post / Patrick Miller, PC World

Finally, partitioning lets you try out other operating systems–like Linux, for example. Generally, two operating systems can’t coexist on the same volume without stepping on one another’s toes, so you won’t be able to dual-boot Linux or ease into Windows 7 if you’re on a single-volume system.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Linux, News, Open Source.
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For the past couple of years, I’ve contemplated buying a smartphone, but managed to avoid it for various reasons. While I appreciate the attention to detail in Apple’s phone platform, for example, there are other aspects of it that are just deal-breakers for me. I’ve long been considering the Android platform, but no phone seemed to offer the right mix of performance, design, and so forth. And I’ve not been thrilled to get tied into long-term contracts, or pay $100/month for a service plan when I don’t use talk much, and don’t do texting at all.

That changed this week, however, when Google announced their Nexus One. I’m not going to offer some in-depth review, which you can find elsewhere, but instead some brief first impressions of a more-or-less first-time smartphone user. So …

My base for comparison for the “smart” component of the smartphone is the iTouch, which I primarily use for accessing my Google based mail, news feeds, and calendars. How does the Nexus One/Android compare?

What I Like, in no particular order:

1. That I could buy an unlocked phone and worry about the service on my own.
2. Nice buying experience: after clicking a few buttons, the phone was off and on my doorstep less than 24 hours later. I dropped in my existing SIM card for a really simple, dirt-cheap, service through my employer, and was ready to go (albeit without data access, except through wi-fi; will probably upgrade to one of the new T-Mobile even more plus plans sometime soon).
3. The hardware is small and sleek and elegant, the screen is gorgeous, and it’s fast.
4. Nice integration. The multi-tasking of Android appears to allow for a nice notification system. My phone is charging right now, for example, but I can occasionally see the trackball light up, which means something (email, twitter updates, calendar reminder) has come up. If I sign in, I can pull a notification panel down for a quick summary. If I tap something, it brings me to the item(s) in question.
5. The integration with Google service is, not surprisingly, really good.
6. The widgets are really nice. For example, the weather one is way beyond what Apple provides: both really useful, and also beautifully-designed.

What I don’t like so much:

1. It’s not as “unlocked” as it could and should be. While it’s great I can use my existing SIM card from a provider other than T-Mobile, it really sucks that I cannot get 3G data service on any other service. It’s both bad for customers and bad for the buying experience to ultimately have three or four different “Nexus One” products just to cater to the idiosyncrasies of each carrier. Come on Google: you need to do better here. For the Nexus Two, let’s see a phone that can work on ALL the major networks: both GSM and CDMA.
2. UI Navigation. Let’s compare reading news feeds. On my iTouch, it’s really quick to move among different categories and feed options: I can do so by tapping on items, and by using the on-screen arrow keys that pop-up to move back, up, down, etc. On the N1, those screen-based navigation helps don’t appear; instead, I need to use the awkward “back” hardware key, and jump back-and-forth. Makes me wonder: did the Google people do actual user studies on this sort of intensive navigation? I’m sure such a study would uncover some obvious design flaws.
3. More on navigation: really don’t like the way the hardware navigation keys work: I have to press harder than I want, and generally don’t see the point of all of them.
4. Some of the aesthetic-design is an obvious step-behind Apple’s. For example, compare Google’s Gmail app to Apple’s Email one. The fonts (actually, in general) are not that great, and they are not terribly-well visually integrated into the (off-white) background. The bottom-line is despite the awesome screen, the emails are not as readable. Also, see point above about navigation.
5. On email, why a separate “Gmail” app?
6. Multi-touch would be nice to have, but not exactly a deal-breaker for me that it doesn’t yet have it.

Overall, however, my complaints are mostly minor issues that can be improved (and hopefully someone at Google comes across this at some point), and am generally happy with the phone.

Update: there’s an obvious problem with first impressions, of course, which is that they’re sometimes based on incomplete information. In the case of the news reader navigation issue I note above, I realized that the app (NewsRob) actually does allow for hovering navigation; it’s just hidden by default. This largely solves the problem.

Open Source

Munich administration switches to OpenDocument Format
The H Open Source: News and Features

Also see my blog entry “Update on sharing documents”.

According to a 2009 development review that the deputy project leader Florian Schießl has posted on his blog, open source OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now the main document exchange standard, with PDF being used for non-editable files.

Games

Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
Al Sweigart

“Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python” is a free e-Book that teaches you how to program in the Python programming language. Each chapter gives you the complete source code for a new game, and then teaches the programming concepts from the example.

“Invent with Python” was written to be understandable by kids as young as 10 to 12 years old, although it is great for anyone of any age who has never programmed before.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Games, News, Open Source.
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I just installed the Broken Link Checker plugin. It scans your blog entries and pages and gives you an nice report and way to fix any links that end up in the great web void rather than honest web pages.

Though I installed it for this, my current blog, I was mostly curious what it would say for my archived blog, which has over 3000 entries created over 5 1/2 years. I was nervous, in fact, because I was afraid that I would have to spend a lot of time tracking down and fixing links that were no longer valid.

The good news is that there are only 16 broken links. The bad news is that of the few I quickly checked, I can’t find web addresses that are valid and current. That is, the old content is either gone or is now so well hidden that I can’t locate it. This happens, of course, but is rather sad somehow. Some of the online articles were no longer there because they were from now defunct newspapers. A couple of MIA links were from major IT trades and, if I remember correctly, vanished after some company mergers.

Should you be thinking of moving your content, learn about “redirection,” the way to tell your site where to go when it gets a request for a page that has been moved. This can be done at several levels, from the Apache .htaccess file, to some HTML, PHP, or even via a WordPress plugin. There are other ways to do it as well, depending on how your site is built.

Think twice before casting your content, and your links, into the web void.

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© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
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Earlier this week, I noted the fact that the 100 day mark for the CodePlex Foundation had passed (on December 19) without any comment from the Foundation on how they had fared against their aggressive goals for that time period, including the replacement of the founding, interim Board of Directors, with a permanent board. 

About a year and a half ago I started working at Hyves. Hyves is the largest social networking website in the Netherlands -- comparable to facebook, but much more popular in the Netherlands. My task was to build a Qt-based desktop application for Hyves. There are two components: chat and photo uploading. Most of it is free software, so this link goes to the source download!

Together with Arend (who used to work on Krdc) and Girish and Roopesh we have built a really cool application. It's a combination of Qt and Javascript running inside webkit, xmpp, photo manipulation using filters and svg, geotagging -- lots and lots of cool stuff. Windows, Linux, OSX, source releases... Working on the Hyves Desktop has taught me a lot of new techniques.

But it's time for me to move on: KO GmbH is getting busy, and my first love has always been KOffice and Krita.

And that leaves a gap in the Desktop team.

So, if you are interested in living in Amsterdam, working with smart people who get things done, on a Qt app that's mostly free software -- mail me!. I've always found Hyves a very good employer, and there is still plenty of exciting work to be done on the desktop application.

So today I booked two bed&breakfasts to handle the overflow of Krita hackers for the coming Krita sprint last weekend of February. We'll be seven, maybe eight developers and Peter Sikking. A weekend like this is usually more discussion, getting together and building a shared vision than hacking, but Cyrille, Sven and Lukas will stay on following the actual sprint for a whole week of what I suspect will be very intensive hacking.

Of course, an occasion like this should be marked by having its own t-shirt. The last dedicated Krita sprint was in 2005, and back then we had t-shirts designed by Nuno:

I gave the last surviving shirt to Cyrille during the Oslo KOffice sprint.

So... Is there anyone who wants to set the vestimentary tone for the 2010 sprint?