IN the four years since Gmail was introduced, Google has done much to improve its free Web-based e-mail service. Still, there are a number of ways it might be improved. This week, while watching the progress bar crawl toward completion on a slow connection, I realized that speeding access to the inbox is one such way.
Photoshop runs in a window on my Compiz-enhanced Ubuntu desktop.
I revisited Wine last week, two years after I made the leap from Windows to Linux. To my surprise, Wine finally reached Version 1.0 earlier this month, ending 15 long years of testing. Quite an achievement for a project that a group of hackers began in 1993 as a way to run Windows 3.1 programs on Linux. Installing and configuring Wine was much easier this time around. Installing Photoshop was as simple as popping in the CD and double-clicking on the right “.exe” file. After installing the program, I could launch it from the Wine menu under Applications. It ran flawlessly.
NOT many sports fans knew it, but the champion Boston Celtics had a secret battle cry—one that many Linux users already know. The word was “Ubuntu,” an African word that roughly translates to “I am because we are.” This is the same philosophy that drives Ubuntu, a popular version of the free Linux operating system sponsored by Canonical Ltd. and developed by a community of programmers and end-users. The software is free—and its users are encouraged to contribute to it in any way they can as a way of giving back to the community.
SIX months ago, I wrote that the Asus Eee PC, an affordable Linux mini-notebook, was a game-changing product. The news in the last few weeks only strengthens my conviction that we will see an increasing number of portable Linux devices in the hands of ordinary consumers, and that hardware vendors and industry pundits who continue to ignore this market will be missing out on a major trend.
Doug Englebart, inventor of the computer mouse, gives the mother of all demos in 1968 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.
THE headline caught my eye. “Microsoft boss Bill Gates signals end of the computer mouse,” the story from the Telegraph, a British newspaper, blared. The headline conjured up images of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, creating his Iron Man suit on a high-end workstation by speaking to it and waving his arms in the air, spinning a projected 3D model of his creation, then trashing it by grabbing it by one corner and tossing it into a virtual trash bin. Intrigued, I read on.
MOZILLA Firefox 3.0, the newest version of the popular open source browser, is now available as a release candidate. In the language of the software industry, that means it’s one step beyond beta testing and almost ready for prime time. Because the new browser came with the latest release of Ubuntu Linux, Hardy Heron, I’ve been using Firefox 3 for quite awhile now. After hurdling a few Linux-specific problems, I found there’s much to like in Firefox 3.
FOR the last few weeks, I’ve been trying out Smart’s prepaid broadband service. Smart Bro Prepaid is available to users with Windows or Mac computers, giving them Internet access anywhere there is a Smart cellular signal.
IS book reading dead? Apple CEO Steve Jobs seems to think so. In an interview with the New York Times last January, Jobs answered a question about Amazon’s $399 electronic book reader, the Kindle. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is,” Jobs said. “The fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the US read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” Was it just another one of Jobs’ classic put-downs of competing technology? Or did he really believe that people have stopped reading books? Or did Jobs have another agenda, as other observers speculate?
Outside the electronics shop window, several dozen Cubans, faces pressed against the glass, gawked at the wares inside. Others fell in line to get in. It wasn’t the latest game console or smart phone they were straining to see. It was a personal computer. Strange as it might seem, up until Friday last week, it was illegal for Cubans to buy a PC for home use. But after assuming power from his ailing brother in February, the new president, Raul Castro, promised to remove many of the restrictions that Cubans have lived under for years, including a ban on cell phones, DVD players, motorbikes—and personal computers.
The free and open source Tellico does a great job of keeping track of your collections.
I KNOW it’s not true, but sometimes, it feels like I’m the only one left in the city that still buys audio CDs. Most people these days seem content with bringing their entire music collection—and listening to them—on their iPods. This situation has no doubt hastened the decline of local music stores, which were never very well-stocked, even in better days. Now, it seems, most of them survive by devoting half their display space to movies, and the other half to pop pap. Still, I have managed to amass several hundred audio CDs over the years—and I have long since given up trying to keep track of them on a spreadsheet. Entering data in this manner—especially individual track information—was simply too tedious.
How best then to manage my music library?
Steve Jobs announcing the end of the official clone program in 1997.
WHEN news surfaced last week that a company in Miami was selling an unauthorized $399 Mac clone, I was skeptical. We’ve been down this road before, and each time it led nowhere.
TWO years after I started writing it, Reporting on ICT is finally off the press. Published by the Konrad Adenauer Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University, the textbook is aimed at helping practicing journalists who want to report on technology. The 211-page volume includes a short history of the computer industry, an explanation of basic terms, and a discussion of major issues that affect the industry. Aside from the huge psychic reward that completing this project brought, Reporting on ICT also financed my first Mac, a G4 iBook that I eventually traded in, months before the book rolled off the press.
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2007 Chin Wong.
IN the four years since Gmail was introduced, Google has done much to improve its free Web-based e-mail service. Still, there are a number of ways it might be improved. This week, while watching the progress bar crawl toward completion on a slow connection, I realized that speeding access to the inbox is one such way.
Photoshop runs in a window on my Compiz-enhanced Ubuntu desktop.
Aspire One’s Linux interface
Doug Englebart, inventor of the computer mouse, gives the mother of all demos in 1968 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.
MOZILLA Firefox 3.0, the newest version of the popular open source browser, is now available as a release candidate. In the language of the software industry, that means it’s one step beyond beta testing and almost ready for prime time. Because the new browser came with the latest release of Ubuntu Linux, Hardy Heron, I’ve been using Firefox 3 for quite awhile now. After hurdling a few Linux-specific problems, I found there’s much to like in Firefox 3.
The free and open source Tellico does a great job of keeping track of your collections.
TWO years after I started writing it, Reporting on ICT is finally off the press. Published by the Konrad Adenauer Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University, the textbook is aimed at helping practicing journalists who want to report on technology. The 211-page volume includes a short history of the computer industry, an explanation of basic terms, and a discussion of major issues that affect the industry. Aside from the huge psychic reward that completing this project brought, Reporting on ICT also financed my first Mac, a G4 iBook that I eventually traded in, months before the book rolled off the press.
