get your feet wet with Linux/Fedora easily: installation tutorial

Moved here and kept updated :

http://paulsdigitalworld.blogspot.com/2007/11/get-your-feet-wet-with-linuxfedora.html

A little poll on Snap Preview

I disabled the floating snap preview function in my blog because I think it’s interruptive and annoying.

I just want to know if other people think so too. Or do you think it’s  helpful.

Fedora 8 is here! Download !

Moved here :

http://paulsdigitalworld.blogspot.com/2007/11/fedora-8-is-here-download.html 

Portable Applications : the future of software industry

Moved here.

Blog management tools

So I have just started my blog. To my disappointment, blogging tools are not as nice as everything else you get in the computer world. I am currently trying Qumana but that program is a little slow in reacting and uses java platform too. I don’t like interdepedent things as you can see from my other posts. http://www.qumana.com/

Zoundry is my alternative. And so far, it’s got entires management which I quite like and which Quamana has too. But the interface is much more simple and elegent. And it has a number of hotkeys that you can use. I just discovered that it has all these pinging options, tag options and so on. I am loving it. Very good for a starter.

Zoundry Improvement: Given the importance, despite the complications involved, the software should be able to give feedbacks on site statistics and stuff. That would make the program better.

In my ideal world, blogging should be as easy as writing emails. You should be able to browse your favorite blog right from the software and you should be able to publish your own like so too, especially if you don’t care too much about the technology side and won’t bother using all these PHP/MySql stuff.

One more blogging tool I found.BTW, a little bit of clarifying. I’m interested in blogging and editing offline and then upload it which gives you a much better interface, reliability and flexibility, just like using a email client.

Blogjet :  You can’t easily see/manage your posts.

Any more recommendations?

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Hotspot @ home: restrictions and possibilities

One of the new things in cell phone industry is cell phone over internet technology. The most influencial one is T-Mobile’s hotspot @ home.I have not had a chance to test it but it seems from my research that people are not so satisfied.

With the vast coverage of wireless internet in public places, houses, and work places, the idea is very charming. It would be somehow stupid if a company is not investing in this area.

The way I see it is that cell phone over the internet is like the thrill for internet addicts at the advent of ISDN. You can call and use the internet at the same time! In due time, TV, landline phone, cell phone, home internet will all be integrated with the signal transported through one medium. Above all, the this is what the industry wants too to lower their fixed cost.

At the present time however, the cell phone internet idea is far from real usefulness because your wireless router even barely keeps your computer connected. Cell phones are way less strong in wireless internet handling than laptops, so if people are still yelling about stability of wireless internet, how can your little cell phone predominate the limited resource. Especially if you are just a home user who knows nothing about tweaking, setting priority, blah blah. Furthermore, the security system of wireless internet system is complicated. The cell phones are still kind of naive to use security systems where you need to log in over the wireless internet etc.

But in the near future, the technology is only going to get better. Opera Mini on the phone and built in Wi-Fi card will be able to work as fine as the ones on computer. (Some work for hardware and software engineers to do I guess. And we really like things that work ! ) Then at a hotspot, it’s not only the matter of calling for free, you should be able to have the whole internet at hand. Battery life will be a practical problem. It is still true with some of the laptops when using wireless internet, the battery goes down pretty fast and exhaust within a few hours. I don’t think I need to stress what it means to have the internet at hand: you get your mails, you can instant chat, video chat etc, etc (I wonder how Research in Motion is going to react losing its blackberry “special features” to the internet.).

A little bit of my philosophy here: things that are compatible and open (in certain ways) develop faster. Like the dominance of microsoft: it’s not because it’s how user-friendly or advanced technology-wise, it’s just that it made itself a platform that program runs on. Similarly, in the war of push-email and wireless internet, when every other company is investing in the spread and develop of Wi-Fi internet, RIM cannot survive just with its older technologies. My advice is: RIM or any other company excels by offering the best integration cell phones with wireless internet.

The process is not simple however. At the bottom line we need a browser, an email client, a video conference software (like skype? or Gizmo?). They have to stand out. Technology has gone a little bit out of control considering how complicated it’s getting. I’m glad that we have all these things we can configure, but I think the success lays at the point of balance where you can get something to basically work in 5 mins. then slowly discover “oh, cool, I can do this and this”.(Or you can have your engineers setup everything but the cost and the practice is another story.) And this is a point that many things have missed.

So the standard I set for a cell phone: good battery life like blackberry phones usually offer, a good interface with good control (definitely touch screen and qwert keyboard for good reasons), the 3 sorts of internet softwares I mentioned and extension ability to add little things like a stock market report receiver etc, which should not halt the system in anyway, excellent integration with the internet (which the phone does but the user doesn’t have to be part of, and this is where the innovations can/should be done). And I think that should be a perfect cell phone in 50 years time.

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Fedora 9 features list unveiled

Moved here and kept updated:

http://paulsdigitalworld.blogspot.com/2007/11/fedora-9-feature-list-leaked.html 

Fedora to be released in 3 days

I’ve been using fedora since fedora 5. I’m gonna keep an eye on this. Fedora According to my experience with fedora 7, they actually put the system a few days earlier than the releasing time. Although I don’t know if the links will be visible. And look at this ftp://ftp.cs.hacettepe.edu.tr/pub/mirrors/fedora/linux/releases/ and this ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/fedora/linux/releases/ You can see 8 already! But they won’t let you see the contents. But we have a peek ha!

And here are some screen shots from RC3. The interface should be the same.

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.php?linux_distribution_sm=Fedora%208%20RC3

2 days now.

I received a letter from Fedora project asking me if I want to join them. I’ve loved fedora but it’s kind of at a halting state. Since it’s earlier versions, 6, 7, 8, you can see from the feature list that there aren’t many new things. Maybe the deeper changes are hidden from the surface discriptions but what do you guys think are there  that we can make fedora better. To me, fedora 7 only improved in one very exciting way: intel 2200 bg wireless works out of the box. Are we saying that linux is so mature that there’s only keeping up with the hardwares but no evolution?

Oh, btw, there’s a link in the comment that you can join fedora project through.  As a linux distribution, the community is very hospitable and everything. I haven’t been part of the project because I am a busy person myself 🙂 But according to my experience, they are good. So even if you’re not a CS major, there are still marketing and all kinds of jobs to do and it’s great experience too using your own speciaties to help with some cutting edge computer technology.

What an operating system ought to be like

I feel lucky that I grew up side by side with computers. Whenever they introduce new things, you just catch up. It’s kind of sad for “computer learners” when they’re crammed with all those “computer knowledge”. Computer things are just things that happen around me everyday so you just know them.

Besides the ability to program, I am not a computer science guy so I am more of a computer user. So I’d like to say something from the user’s point of view. Whoever gets what follows, I hope you can be the new Bill Gates and rule the OS world.

Windows, Linux, Mac OS has all grown too “advanced” for daily users, not even to mention Solaris, FreeBSD those sort of heavenly things. What do you do on your computer every day? I can list my tasks on a napkin.

Whenever a friend asks you to “fix” his/her computer or something, they’ll say “I just want to do this and the computer won’t let me” (Or is not responding etc). So why don’t we have an operating that just does “this”.

My idea of an OS in the future is custermer-based. There are many tasks they can choose to do but the computers are designed just to do those. Microsoft offers a spoon that works as a remote to our TV. But why do we want a spoon that operates our TV? So that we can scoop and switch channels? But most of the time, we just want to get our food served, smoothly. So why don’t we have a computer that turns on and 4 choices shows up: check your email, surf the internet, use office or play some music.

It is not at all hard to hide all the configuration from the user with any already existant system, and the future of the business is to have personel remotely manage the software, system configurations, updates, installing of new functionalities on request from the customer, or at least the way I see it. The business could work like this: you go to a company to sign up for a computer like you do with a phone company. You give a description of what you need to do on your computer and the company will offer you something that turns on and does your work. (OpenOffice is probaby gonna get more popular.) If you need something else or something new, then you simply email the company and the engineers come up with a solution and they install the software remotely on your computor and you can work with it the next day.

I wonder my idea will get expensive, but considering the engineer’s ability to manage thousands of these actions on a computer per day, it should not at all be. The time should largely be spent on understanging the customers’ peculiar requests that says: I want the computer to pick up a call for me at 4 and order grocery at 4:30. But those are not at all undoable. You just install a software, again, customized, to let them schedule their weekly shopping at Wal-Mart by filling in a time and a shoppint list.And above all, the thing got to be simple. No configurability at all at the user’s end.

Microsoft stopped Microsoft Bob which may be a not bad choice because the thing with Microsoft Bob is, as always, we don’t want something fancy and complicated, we want things simple and efficient.

This resembles what I have in mind in a way, only less specialized and with no real user support:

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/turn-your-old-pc-into-a-webapp-monster-with-gos-318346.php   

Smallville: New Season

The new season of Smallville features the new kryptonian cousin Kara. However, I don’t see it a big highlight of the show. Instead, it is more of a compromise.

The first and second season of Smallville became very dull when it repeats the story of a meteor freak found and taken care of. The 3rd, 4th, 5th introduced complex relationships and intense conflicts which made the show really exciting.

Smallville isn’t like CSI. The audience cannot just easily pick up even though that’s probably what the makers want. Given this fact, why not keep the style of high intricacy.

Kara or Zorel kind of characters appear to me that the crew realizes that they need excitement yet are able to come up with some within the already existing roles. I am not against adding new characters, but the new characters shouldn’t just be shallow and added and discarded “in need”. It really spoils the integrity of the show. And it doesn’t help new audience to catch up either.