The Compiz guys (compiz is a composite engine for Linux that implements cool visual effects) have implemented a 3D mode. If you own a pair of 3D glasses, those with one red and one blue glass, you will see the desktop in actual 3D. Cool 
Last Saturday we went to Saturn, a huge electronics store in Rotterdam, to buy Justyna an iPod. Incidentally, this is the kind of shopping that I like, much better than acting as a clothes hanger for three hours in a row.
She got an iPod nano 4GB with a “cute” pink leather “jacket”. Great. When we got home we set it up. It’s always fun to see how people who are not that much involved in IT that much see things and what they notice. Of course the setup went smooth, you can leave that to Apple. What disturbed her, however, was Apple’s pushing of (1) registering her iPod which included giving her name, address, phone number and work industry and after that (2) pushing her to get a iTunes Music Store account, which means more information plus yet another user name and password. Even though she will most probably never buy any song there. Or, as she put it, “I don’t want a stupid Apple ID!”
We decided to break off the registration procedure. But now, every time you plugin the device, it will ask to register and then, every time you plug in the device, you have to click “Later”. We’ll see how long she will be able to resist.
Chris Saad, Chairman of the Data Portability Working Group, confirmed to me this morning that Microsoft’s David Treadwell, a VP at Windows Live,
will be joining the organization. Microsoft is expected to make a
formal announcement in the coming days. News first leaked out via a
shadowy post at Computerworld this morning.
Things are moving fast, at least in terms of support of the initiative. Next: results.
The company behind Ubuntu has now released version 1.0 of Bazaar, a distributed version control system. Features:
Friendly. Distributed version control doesn’t need to be complex. Bazaar is Distributed Version Control for Human Beings. Bazaar has a natural feel because we focus on usability, particularly task efficiency.
Smart. Bazaar has perfect support for renaming files AND directories. This means developers can refactor without holding back because of fear of merging. It also means you can unleash your community and merge efficiently even from contributors who are radically restructuring the tree.
Fast. Almost every open source project can get the advanced features of Bazaar without slowing down its developers. See our impressive benchmark results across a wide range of open source projects.
Efficient. Bazaar’s default storage format is highly efficient, clearly better than its main competitors according to our disk space benchmarks.
Lightweight. No dedicated server with Bazaar installed is needed, just FTP access to a web server. A smart server is available for those requiring additional performance or security but it is not required in many cases - Bazaar 1.x over plain http performs well.
Just a tool. Bazaar can play a key role is helping you get from great idea to running code in the hands of end users. Tools are only part of the puzzle though so our documentation explicitly sets out to make you productive, explaining how to use Bazaar effectively, presenting best practices and insightful tips.
Extensible. Bazaar is designed as a Python API with a plugin system, so it is easy to embed in your tools and projects and easy to extend or integrate with existing infrastructure. Integration via XML is supported by a plugin. Whether you are a single user keeping track of configuration files or a team of 100s of people on multiple continents, Bazaar is a great choice.
Embeddable. A key design feature of Bazaar is support from the ground up for pluggable storage formats. One size does not fit all, particularly when new application delivery platforms - like the OLPC, iPod and Amazon’s S3 - have different characteristics to traditional filesystems. If you want intelligent version control embedded into your application or content management system, Bazaar has the architecture you need.
Safe. Bazaar is backed by a thriving open source community and sponsored by Canonical, one of the fastest growing open source companies around. The development process follows best practices with code review of all core and community changes. Bazaar has a huge test suite (over 10,000 tests) that ensures that new features can be rapidly added without breaking existing ones. We are rapidly building the world’s best VCS, delivering several dozen improvements to our adopters each and every month.
Free. Bazaar is available under the GPL v2 or later. If you want to embed Bazaar into your products under a different license, please contact us.
Sun Microsystems announced this morning that it has agreed to acquire open source database leader MySQL AB
for $1 billion in cash and assumed stock options. [..]This seems to me to be a great deal both for Sun and for MySQL. Anyone
who follows this blog or has heard my talks will have seen me say “Data
is the Intel Inside” of the next generation of internet applications,
the very heart of Web 2.0. And of course, most of those Web 2.0
applications are built on the LAMP stack, where M stands for MySQL, far
and away the leading open source database.
During yesterday’s keynote, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs introduced the Macbook Air.
It’s an ultra-thin and light Macbook. It has a 13″ screen, 1.6 Ghz C2Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 80GB hard drive, full-size keyboard, multitouch touchpad, one Micro-DVI out and one USB 2.0 port. It’s an interesting product. But I wonder is where it fits in.
For use as a main computer it might be a tad limited. The processor is acceptable, as is the memory, but the hard drive might not be sufficient. Also I think one USB port is really not enough. I have two on my MacBook and I already have problems with that. Also, there’s no UTC network connector and no CD/DVD drive. There are ways around that (such as a USB CD player, or this new feature that is called remote CD or whatever), but still, as a main computer — I’m not convinced.
So, what would it be used for instead? As a travel mate maybe. It’s light, so you can bring it anywhere, to work, in the train, on the plane. Its battery life is acceptable (up to 5 hours, an hour less than my Macbook). But if it’s a laptop that you’re supposed to have just for travel, presentations, and generally, to carry around with you everywhere, then the price tag is a bit high (this baby costs $1799).
And if you want something to carry around with you, something you only use for presentations and while traveling, but not as your main work station, isn’t an Asus Eee much more interesting? For one it’s heck of a lot cheaper ($299), which also means it’s not as much of a disaster if you accidentally leave it in the train (not something that would happen to me of course *cough*). Sure it’s not as powerful (it has a 900Mhz processor, 512MB RAM, 4-8GB of HD space), and it’s much smaller (it has a 7″ display), but that’s the point. It’s a cheap device for on the go. It’s not trying to be a full-blown desktop. It’s pretty clear where Asus positioned it: as a cheap, ultra-portable device. Great for presentations, great for doing a bit (but admittedly — not a lot) of work on the go.
So I’m not all that thrilled with the Macbook Air.
It’s kind of cool:
DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.
