Linux GUI difficulties

Sometimes you encounter problems with the Linux user interface that you just don't get on Windows or the Mac. Today I was downloading my photos with digiKam, when the process suddenly came to a halt. The reason? "digiKam could not import the file 'dsc.......'". Not really a very good explanation. I tried restarting digiKam, and re-plugging the camera. All to no avail.

As it turns out, the problem was simply a full disk. On Windows, you would have had countless annoying messages saying "You are running out of free disk space on drive C:" long before the disk was full, but on Linux the program just stops functioning all together. You're not even told that the disk is full, and there are no easy tools to empty your trash and clean up unused files like there are on Windows. It's a pity when your favourite operating system lets you down like this, but I have to admit that most users are not likely to think of typing "df" at the Konsole terminal when their program stops working. Let's hope KDE4 solves this full disk problem.

Google's acquisition of DoubleClick is cleared by the FTC

Google has just got the approval of the FTC for their upcoming acquisition of DoubleClick, a leading online advertising company, for $3.1 billion in cash. Apparently the transaction was cleared with no conditions, leaving Google free to innovate in the advertising field.

"In its clearance opinion released today, the FTC explicitly rejected any current or potential competition concerns. Google and DoubleClick are complementary businesses and do not compete with each other. Google's current business primarily involves the selling of text-based ads, while DoubleClick's core business is delivering and reporting on display ads. DoubleClick does not buy ads, sell ads, or buy or sell advertising space. Rather, it provides technology to enable advertisers and publishers to deliver ads once they have agreed to terms, and to provide advertisers and publishers statistics relating to those ads."

This is good news for Google, as they will now have access to the huge market share and consumer base of their own service combined with DoubleClick. The acquisition will complement their recent offerings of Video and Image based ads, and will offer advertisers and publishers new, integrated ways of managing, showing and creating ads.

Read more: Official Google Blog: Analysis: The FTC clears our acquisition of DoubleClick

KDE 4.0 release draws near

KDE 4.0 is now nearing completion, with the release event scheduled for 17 January 2008. The desktop interface is being finalized now, and the 2nd Release Candidate has already been released, providing an early look at the new Plasma interface.

Although the background APIs and data structures underlying KDE4 were finalized a while ago, Plasma is only nearing completion now. From the various previews around, it looks as if KDE 4.0 is going to be the introduction to a new era in the evolution of the Linux GUI. Plasma looks really smooth, and the APIs behind it are just as neat.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to build the RC2 properly. I keep getting a segmentation fault. So I can't give you a first hand account of KDE4 (yet!), but for more info check out the official announcement - it's got heaps of screenshots.

Google Highly Open Participation Contest - GHOPC

Recently Google launched a new program called the "Google Highly Open Participation Contest", or GHOPC. This initiative allows younger developers (13 and above) who could not join in the Google Summer of Code to help work on open source projects such as Apache and GNOME. For every 3 tasks that an individual completes, Google will award USD$100, up to a total of $500 (15 tasks). The tasks vary from simple ones such as "Create a short slideshow of distinctive plone websites", to highly advanced tasks such as " Implement WorldKit.org Mapping as a Joomla! v 1.5 Extension". So far there has been a huge amount of work on behalf of the developers, especially in the tasks of well-known projects like Joomla.

At the moment I have temporarily paused my Android development in order to focus on the GHOPC. I believe it is more suited to my abilities at the present time. So far I've completed 2 out of 3 tasks, so I'm looking forward to the completion of the next one! It also means I may not be around much on the blog, as the tasks have fairly strict deadlines.

Here I see yet another example of Google's support of the open source community. Regardless of whether you like Google as a company or not, you have to acclaim them for continuing a good work here. Now, with the Google SoC, and the GHOPC, open source projects have a commercial backing, even if only once a year, which encourages upcoming business leaders to contribute to open source, and reaps huge benefits for the projects involved.

Update

As you've probably noticed, I haven't been very active on this blog lately. A combination of real-life events and my other blog have conspired to rob me of the time I was using to develop The Big Byte. Hopefully I should have a little more time now, but I still won't be able to research and write articles as much. I hope you'll be able to put up with my ramblings about my current projects, at least until my other tasks sort themselves out. :)

In the meantime, any feedback on the site is appreciated (as always!). In particular, does anyone have any ideas about whether I should change the theme again?

Android Apps

I've just got hold of Google's Android SDK, which includes an emulator of the Android platform. I must say I'm pretty excited about this, it looks like Android has the potential to create the "ideal" PDA OS - that is, one based on open standards (Linux), and that doesn't lock anything down (quote from the Android website:
Android does not differentiate between the phone's basic and third-party applications -- even the dialer or home screen can be replaced.) This is really going to be great for everyone who loves the iPhone's features but wished it wasn't locked down so much.

So, I started up the android emulator, and was extremely impressed with the sleekness of the interface. It's also very responsive - even with my CPU going 100% and no graphics card. The interface is very smooth and polished, with the capability to create translucent windows and animation effects.

I'm certainly looking forwards to writing apps for the Android. It uses a pseudo-Java VM called "Dalvik" (can anyone hear an "exterminate!" here?) to run third-party apps, and although there are a few new UI concepts (Activities, Views, Intents...), the API is overall very easy to learn. To encourage developers to write "great apps" for the Android, Google is offering USD$10 million worth of prizes for the most promising apps. This should create a huge incentive for developers, and I expect to see plenty of Android apps by the closing date of March 08.

Overall, the Android looks pretty darn good - it's not just the iPhone opensourced, but a whole new concept of open, integrated phones. I'll give you updates as I get used to the API and OS, but for now, rest assured that all the hype about the "gPhone" has been justified - and doubly at that. I just can't wait for the "official" release in late 2008!

Google Translation Widget and Templates

Well, I'm now back! I've finished exams, so you should be seeing a bit more of me now. I've started adding some improvements to my blog template (as you can see, it still needs a lot of work - the logo still needs to be fixed :D), and in the course of renovation I discovered this handy Google translation widget.

Google recently changed over to using their internally developed language translation system, and they will now automatically translate 29 different languages. So far my tests have proved Google Translate to be a reasonable translation system, certainly better than a lot I have tried. If anyone is reading this who speaks another language, I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me what you think of the automatic translation tools.

Actually I think I'm going to have to change templates again. This template just doesn't allow you to customize it much, and I think I'd prefer a 3-column one anyway. What do you think? If you've got any thoughts please post a comment or email them to me - there's no way of me knowing what you want unless you tell me! :)

MySpace joins Google OpenSocial's sponsors

This Thursday Google announced that social networking giant MySpace will be joining the supporters of their new OpenSocial API. This makes OpenSocial into a very serious threat to Facebook, who just opened their platform to developers recently.

"OpenSocial is going to become the de facto standard (for developers) instantly out of the gates. It is going to have a reach of 200 million users, which is way bigger than anything else out there," Chris DeWolfe, chief executive and co-founder of MySpace, told reporters.

Google lost out to Microsoft last week in a bid to invest in Facebook, but now they look like having something even bigger than MySpace and Facebook combined. When OpenSocial goes live early Friday morning, it's going to be the biggest thing in social networking since Facebook was launched earlier this year. Not only will this new platform give Google a huge boost in the area, but OpenSocial will also allow anyone from small start-ups to big multi-million-dollar companies to use a standard programming interface to interact, store and manage about the user.

Update:As a testimony to the worldwide belief in the success of OpenSocial, Google shares surged to an all-time high of $713.72 on Nasdaq on Thursday, before closing at $703.21, down $3.79. This shows the investors' support of Google's operations, and the future looks bright for Google's latest addition to their online strategy.

Keep posted for more info on OpenSocial when it is released on Friday.

Google OpenSocial Launched - A New Era for Web Integration?

Although it's still unofficial, many reports show that tomorrow Google will release their new "OpenSocial" developer API. But it's more then just an API. Google plans to "out-open" Facebook with a totally new strategy of integration by opening their entire platform to third party developers. TechCrunch says:

"On November 5 we’ll likely see third party iGoogle gadgets that leverage Orkut’s social graph information - the most basic implementation of what Google is planning. From there we may see a lot more - such as the ability to pull Orkut data outside of Google and into third party applications via the APIs. And Google is also considering allowing third parties to join the party at the other end of the platform - meaning other social networks (think Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, Digg and thousands of others) to give access to their user data to developers through those same APIs."

This looks like it could turn into something big. I'll give you more reports on it over the week (if I can fit it in-between exams!), but for now rest assured that Google has the beginnings of something really big here. And I mean big. It just depends on who adopts it, but this has the potential to revolutionize the whole social and consumer-based development model of the web.

New Gmail Version is Live

Google Operating System reports that the new version of Gmail that was the subject of speculation a few days ago is now live on a few accounts. The new features include an updated Contact Manager and faster loading of messages due to the prefetching features built in. However, Google Gears support is still lacking, and makes this seem like a minor update instead of a major overhaul.

Now, the question is: When is my account gonna be upgraded? :)

Quote

Here's an interesting quote I found on my iGoogle homepage:

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
— G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton was a wonderful writer and composed many great arguments. I think this quote fits in to today's world perfectly, despite the fact that he said it many years ago.

Gmail adds IMAP support

Many users have been waiting a long time for Google to add IMAP support to their popular Gmail service. Today Google System announced that this feature has finally been added, and will be rolled out to all existing accounts in the next few days.

IMAP has many benefits over POP, including a continuous connection to the server and more intelligent client/server interaction. This means that users of Outlook or Evolution will be able to
synchronize their read items and folders across computers. When you mark an item as read in Outlook on your desktop, the same item will be marked read on the web interface as well as your laptop and PDA.

This is a long-awaited feature which is certainly going to boost Gmail's appeal, especially to the business users of Google Apps.

Device driver update causes Vista activation to expire

James Bannan has discovered that updating the drivers for major system components such as hard drives and graphics cards can cause your Vista system to deactivate and become unusable. Microsoft has confirmed the problem, and it seems there is no way to fix it other than give Microsoft Help and Support a call to reactivate your system.

Windows Vista's activation scheme hasn't changed much since XP. Basically, if you change a certain number of components in your system's hardware configuration, Windows will deactivate as an anti-piracy measure. The problem is, Vista counts driver updates as hardware changes. This can cause your system to deactivate unexpectedly, and without warning.

This is a very serious problem with Windows, especially for mission-critical configurations. If someone unknowingly updates the graphics card drivers to make the system run faster or use a new feature, the whole system could fail. Then the company or individual relies on Microsoft being available on the phone and ready to reactivate quickly. Although the chance of Microsoft's support center being unavailable is small, this does present a serious problem of being "reliant on Microsoft", not just for your initial installation, but for reactivation at any time you feel like upgrading your software.

NTFS write support for Linux

Hooray! Linux can finally write to NTFS partitions, thanks to the NTFS-3G project. Check it out, I've found that it is incredibly helpful in writing to my (Windows Formatted) external hard drive.

This just goes to show: no matter how closed Microsoft made the NTFS standard, somebody was bound to break it open.

China Blocks Google, Yahoo, Live Search Engines with Redirect to Baidu

Reports have streamed in that the three major search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search are being blocked in China, with all request for the sites being redirected to China's own Baidu Search Engine.

Some people think that the redirect was due to China's strained relations with the USA over the Dalia Lama. However, there have been some reports of Google.com functioning correctly from within China, so there doesn't seem to be a nationwide blockage. Of course, these people could just be Chinese Internet Police.... ;) Another possibility is that China is upgrading their whole blocking infrastructure, and this is resulting in irregular false-positives with the search engines. This is supported by the fact that BabelFish.com is also reported to have been blocked.

Keep watching this space and I'll get news to you as soon as some more definite reports come in. For now - if you're in China, you might only have 3 search engines to choose from: Baidu, Baidu, or Baidu.