Blogging Roller

Everex debuts $399 ultramobile PC: The Cloudbook is designed for Internet usage, not for heavy duty graphics applications. Like the gPC, it will come with software or links to FireFox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Google Documents & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Google News, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Google Product Search, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xine Movie Player, RhythmBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3.

The gOS operating system looks pretty cool. It's based on Ubuntu Linux plus the slick Enlightenment Window manager and the desktop and menus make Google "your entire computing experience. I can see how geeks like me and the kids we've brainwashed into digging the GIMP might like it, but aren't most folks going to be scratching their heads and asking how well it runs MS Word? I'd love to know how Everex's existing $200 gOS powered desktop is selling.

First, some social software links.

• BuddyPress — Creating a Social Network based on Wordpress MU
  "There is talk of BuddyPress and DiSo essentially being the same thing. DiSo, from what I’ve read so far, is all about distributing your user-generated content first using Wordpress as the central tool. BuddyPress is more about turning Wordpress (MU in fact) itself into its own niche social network."
• Elgg: the open source social networking platform
  "Elgg is an open-source social networking platform. It offers blogging, networking, community, collecting of news using feeds aggregation and file sharing features. Everything can be shared among users with access controls and everything can be cataloged by tags as well"
• Cisco's Social Networking Strategy Comes Into Focus - ReadWriteWeb
  CISCO's Entertainment Operating System (EOS) is a "platform that will be used to deliver video and other multimedia content to online community properties" with "social networking and content recommendation"
• BadMagicNumber: Shipping software
  "Custom vertical social network, with feed integration" - based on Java, ROME and PostgreSQL
• The Blog Squad: your music. your friends. your life.
  "Social music network" with blogs powered by Roller
• IBM demos ‘On Demand Workplace’
  "Employees have their own profiles based on content and function. Personalization is also allowed via imported Google Gadgets and RSS feeds" with screen shots
• Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
  "The most-hyped site right now, Facebook, is the 'Iron Chef' of the Internet."
• Micro Persuasion: Reader Integrates Google's Stealth Social Net: The Address Book
  "Google Reader became the latest Google service to leverage the Gmail contact database and become more social."

And second, some feel-good PHP, Rails and Linux links.

• Michael Kimsal: Continued sad state of PHP development
  "with every release also comes fears of tiny, sometimes undocumented, changes that break existing code, and often for no solid reason"
• ZSFA -- Rails Is A Ghetto (2007-12-31)
  "If anyone had known Rails was that unstable they would have laughed in his face. Think about it further, this means that the creator of Rails in his flagship products could not keep them running for longer than 4 minutes on average."
• Linux defector says RHEL zero, Sun Solaris hero
  "Solaris ultimately has a lower acquisition cost because it includes features that users are likely to purchase separately in a Linux environment."

• ZDNet: GPL 3 isn't the 'last call'
  "here are some key changes in the latest GPL draft and how they're designed to target the Microsoft-Novell partnership"
• Allison Randal: GPLv3, Third Draft
  "I'm beginning to lose confidence in the FSF as the primary defender of free software principles"
• Simon Phipps, SunMink: GPLv3 Third Draft
  "All very interesting, I know there will be a lot of discussion about this inside Sun over the next few weeks."

• Slashdot | Linux Preinstalled Dell Available Soon
  in the comments: "So I'm wondering if this is an actual effort to offer Linux boxes or another PR stunt?"
• Ian Murdock: Making Solaris more like Linux
  "There is no reason we can't make Solaris look and feel more like Linux"

• InfoWorld: Dell division will design Web 2.0 datacenters
  "Dell hopes to sell the service to only the largest Web-based companies, the top dozen or two dozen hyper-scale datacenters of the business world"
• Sun HPC Watercooler: Rackable Clones Black Box
  "a 40-foot by 8-foot mobile data center with the capacity to hold up to 1,200 of company's rack-mount 1U (1.75-inch) servers"

• fnokd! JBoss.ORG: Blogging & RSS
  "I think personal blogging, even on corporate topics, tends to be more real and honest."
• fnokd! JBoss.ORG: Plans
  Plans include Blogging, RSS and aggregation
• BCOM 522: Corporate Blogs: Sun Corporate Blogs Case Study
  "blogs also give Sun engineers an outlet for showcasing and getting credit for the work they're doing"
• Discovering Identity: Treo Blogging Attempts
  Mark tried u*Blog, HBlogger, BlogPlanet, and mo:Blog -- "This little exercise has fallen way short of my expectations"

• Breathing Life into a Dead Coyote (Part 1)
  Geerjan works to bring the Coyote project back to life for Netbeans 6.0
• Southeast VC: Calling All Entrepreneurs
  "I still keep hearing from entrepreneurs that VCs are hard to reach"
• Ben Rockwood: Web 2.0 Mashup: Define it and win a prize
  "people like Tim Bray lay the foundations for greatness and people like Michael reap rewards not due to them"

I've been itching to try Ubuntu so I decided to install it on my old Dell box, which as running Debian. I downloaded Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft, burned it to CD, backed up my data and booted off the new CD.

While I expected my Mac upgrade to go smoothly, I was expecting this upgrade to require a long morning of opening the computer, growling and cursing under my breath. That didn't happen. The Linux installers I've used in the past didn't give me the option to resize partitions and I've been using one big partition, so I was pleasantly surprised that the installer has the built-in ability to resize my partition without losing data. I was also happy to see that my video card was configured properly, which is a first for me -- previously, I've always had to edit X config files to get things right. So far, it's thumbs up to Ubuntu.

I'm replacing Redhat 9 Linux with Gentoo 2004.0 Linux on my old AMD Athlon 1600+ box tonight. So far, the process has gone very smoothly.

Update: Around the time that I wrote "the process has gone very smoothly" my install suddenly took a bad turn. I am in the bootstrapping part of the install and, every time I run the bootstrap script, the build fails with a compiler, assembler, or loader crash. Each time, it fails in a slighly different part of the process; once in gettext and once in ncurses. One of the error messages indicated a hardware problem and the guys on the #gentoo IRC channel say the same thing. Perhaps I have some faulty memory./p>

Another update: Turns out, I did have a bad memory module and I forgot to properly configure my swap partition. I removed the bad module, configured my swap partition, and the bootstrap build proceded without a hitch.

From Computer World's interview with BEA's CEO Alfred Chuang:

What Linux trends are you seeing with BEA software?

Huge adoption curve climbing very fast for BEA over the last six to nine months. A lot of focus in the financial services marketplace, where there's a lot of experimentation and initial deployment going on with Linux on Intel. And I think the motivation in that arena is simplification and cost reduction, so they are looking to buy significantly less expensive hardware.

What's the breakdown of platforms on which BEA software is running?

About 50% is on Sun, and about 23%, 24% is on Hewlett-Packard. Hewlett-Packard has both Intel and non-Intel platforms in there. And then it drops off pretty quick. IBM hardware, I think, is 5% or 7%. In some countries, we sell a lot of IBM's hardware.

What about the Linux operating system?

Linux is around the 15% to 20% range, which has climbed pretty quickly.