Hmmm. I should think of something witty to say here. After all, the last tag line was almost humorous. Nope. Can't think of anything. Just read the blog - okay?!
I've headed back to Deezer after spending quite some time at Grooveshark. For those of you who don't know, they're both streaming music websites (i.e. you can listen to the music for free, online, and LEGALLY!).
Why Deezer (I'm sure I hear at least one person ask... )? Well, in my opinion/onion, they have better 'radio' stations, like:
I've installed Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 (Lucid) on my Toshiba Portege (ie. old, old laptop) because XP was running a tad sluggish. So far, I'm loving it! Yes, they've put the window buttons on the wrong - I mean the Apple (left) - side, but then I've been using a Macbook Pro as my home laptop for a while.
User experience:
It's fast - snappy even - which is saying something considering that the laptop it's on might be best described as antique. The new interface/themes which they have put under the banner of 'light' - Ambiance and Radiance. I currently use Ambience - and I have to admit, it's a lot nicer to look at compared to the 'woodsiness' of the old Ubuntu colours.
Installing:
The install (I used the Wubi installer which installs as a separate virtual disk so there's no risk) was easy and relatively pain free - didn't even have to answer much in the way of questions.
Problems?
I say relatively because the one issue I had with the install was that Ubuntu didn't recognise my ancient video card - a Trident CyberXP - and the default screen size was 800x600... positively tiny. Not much of an issue if I could easily fix it up. Of course, I couldn't, at least not easily. This led to a couple of hours of searching forums until I found that I needed to create (because Ubuntu doesn't use it by default) a blank xorg.conf file with some basic settings (below). Once that was done, restarted the x-server and voila! Had a 1024x768 resolution again! And then, after heaps of searching, I find out that Trident CyberXP cards can't do 3D under X-Server (though it can in XP). Just have to suck that up and move on.
In terminal, run sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf , enter your password when asked, and then add the following:
On the other hand, I've customised it a bit - added a dock because I like the icons - added Google Desktop and Chrome (because I'm a fan boy) which was all really easy using the Ubuntu Software Center. Screen:
Ubuntu Software Center
This is a really great addition to the distro. It makes finding the software out of all the mess which is Linux Packages simple. Nice. It's basically an application for easily finding, installing and removing programs. It's a 1-click type of interface and categorises the types of applications you might be looking for. Screens below.
Final Comments:
If you're looking for an alternative to Windows, Ubuntu 10.04 is already a great OS, with some final tweaking (I guess) before the final. Worth a play at least using the Live CD.
In all the hype that built up over the impending announcement of (in my opinion) the next to useless (for me anyway) iPad (I'll talk about that some other time...), somehow I missed this little gem that's been bubbling away in Microsoft's hush-hush research labs. I don't know how I missed it, there's bits of info. all over the place, and MS was even hyped to unveil it at the 2010 CES... but they didn't.
Anyway - I'm actually quite excited about the Courier Project and its implications... if it ever happens.
Here's a video of one of the ways it could work:
So, pretty nifty yeah?
If it actually ends up coming out, it will probably do more for education (at least) than Apple's iPad.
As can be seen, one of its main features is that it is hinged... that's right - it's got a great, big (well not that big actually) hinge right in the middle. For those of use who use books etc, this is great. It also appears to do something that the iPad does not - multitasking. For the end user, this is BIG news. Whereas on the iPad you can only really do one thing at a time, the dual screen layout means that on one page, I can have my favourite tech blog (yay for Gizmodo today) open on one side and do up my notes on the other! I can drag and drop my cut text from the left and put in my journal on the right. And I can still watch my movies if I want... just like the iPad. So, the iPad is built on a mobile phone OS (yep- it's the same as the iPhone and iPod Touch, just bigger) and the Courier, being built by MS, will probably run on some version of Windows.
Why is this important? Because, now I can run what I want (ie. the same office applications that I have at work) on my tablet and I'll probably even be able to watch movies at Hulu or Vimeo, because Microsoft don't discriminate against Adobe and they need Flash, which the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch doesn't and will never support. (one caveat: I can't actually watch at Hulu.com as it's only available to people in the US and Canada, and definitely not in Australia).
Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't take the time to unveil it at CES 2010 - instead they introduced a 'nameless' HP tablet. . >8-(
Anyway, here's hoping that it arrives sometime soon. Unlike the iPad - if this one is compatible with my Windows boxes at school, I'll buy one!
Yay!!! I've finally made it to number 1 on google!!! You've got to love searching for yourself, it sometimes makes you feel better.
Here's a screenshot to prove it:
In related news (sort of) version 1.1 of the Woot! Public License will soon be released. Written to be understood by the lay IT person, it aims to maintain all the freedoms of the first license while more closely adhering to the Open Source Initiative's [link] definition of Open Source. Oh - and I've already created some software using the Woot! 1.1 Public License (a simple search and delete app in VB.Net).
That will probably be posted on Teaching IPT with a reference in this blog.
