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.
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 2009 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.
