[Wed Dec 30 14:04:31 CET 2009]

There have been plenty of rumors about the Google Nexus One lately. Personally, I'm not a heavy user of the cell phone, although I must say I am relying on it more and more for my daily life. Obviously, it's not just the phone calls anymore. It's also texting, keeping a contact list with me at all times, the ability to take pictures on the spot, synchronize todo lists, checking out the calendar, etc. Still, I don't use it nearly as much as other people do, perhaps because I work from home and am sitting by my computer most of the day anyways. However, I must say that, nice as the iPhone is, I'm not particularly attracted to it. I already have an iPod and use a Apple laptop every now and then. Yes, their products are very good. I love the way they are designed. Also, they just work. The flow is beautiful, that's for sure. On the other hand, they are not nearly as flexible as the other technology I am used to (i.e., open source software). That's why I sort of like the idea of the Nexus One and Android. Here is a first-hand report on the Google Nexus One published by Fast Company. {link to this story}

[Wed Dec 30 13:40:01 CET 2009]

Back around 1998 or so, when I was starting to feel sick and tired of Windows and, due to my increasing commitment to the technical field, had already heard of something called Linux, I began researching about alternative operating systems and played around with a few of the choices then available: FreeBSD, BeOS, and even a little OS written by some Dutch people in assembly whose name I don't even remember now. In any case, I found that absolutely fascinating. It turned out there was a world outside Windows after all. Not only that. That world was lively, functional and, above all, different. To some extent, those days spent experimenting with different OSes opened my mind to the possibilities of computing. In the end, I settled down on Red Hat Linux 4.1 or 4.2 (I don't remember which exact version, but I think perhaps I ran my tests on 4.1 and, by the time I installed my home computer, Red Hat had already released version 4.2). Well, it seems that the world of alternative OSes is still as lively as it was back then. Tech Radar publishes a piece on 10 non-mainstream operating systems that includes things like ReactOS (a Windows 2000 look-alike), Haiku (a BeOS-compatible open source product), AROS (an open source implementation of the AmigaOS), Syllable and more. In any case, the article makes for an interesting read. {link to this story}

[Tue Dec 29 14:43:37 CET 2009]

Disruptive technologies always, by definition, have an impact on society and its institutions. It comes as no surprise, then, that online social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the like) are changing the way we do things and are therefore seen as a threatening trend by certain people. The knee-jerk reaction so far has been, as it tends to happen in these cases, to ban the use of social networking sites in schools around the country. However, Nicholas Brambel argues in Slate that, instead of banning Facebook and friends from the school premises, we should be doing quite the opposite:

...this is shortsighted. Educators should stop thinking about how to repress the huge amounts of intellectual and social energy kids devote to social media and start thinking about how to channel that energy awat from causing trouble and toward getting more out of their classes. After all, it's not as if most kids are investing commensurate energy into, say, their math homework. Why not try to start bridging the worlds of Facebook, YouTube, and the classroom?

(...)

How can teachers bring social networking into the classroom? For starters, students could talk about what they're doing on Facebook and company, map out the ways they're making connections with one another, and share videos and software they've created. Once the conversation gets going, teachers could figure out whether some kids were being left out and find ways to increase those students' media literacy and bring them into the fold. Teachers can manage the project by selecting the best content and conversations, and incorporating it into other parts of the curriculum. If a student created an entry on Wikipedia for a local band or sports team, other students could work on revising the entry and building it into a larger local history project. The audience for school projects need no longer be one hurried teacher.

Schools could also find students like the ones who made the stairwell dance videos and get them to produce a school-sanctioned video with a better subject —the re-enactment of a literary or historical scene, for example. This isn't as simple as a teacher saying, "Why don't you write a poem about your frustration, rap it on video, and put it on YouTube?" Instead, a teacher could assign students the task of filmind a scene from The Scarlet Letter in the stairwell, identifying the dynamic of shaming in the novel, and writing about how it might be playing out in their Facebook news feeds. In math class, students could develop statistical models and graphs of the patterns of information flow in their social networks. To understand how advertising works, students from different backgrounds and with different online habits could compare what's being hawked to them. And for a school journalism project, teams of students could aggregate other students' narratives from blogs, Facebook, and Twitter and complile a real-time collective analysis of the state of their educational union.

(...)

Schools also stand to gain from harnessing student's budding tech experitse. Rather than relying on private companies like Blackboard for expensive software, schools can get students who are taking computer programming to develop social media tools, apps, and platforms for creating and sharing class projects. These projects could then go on a school's Web site, in an iTunes-style store. Moodle, Ck12.org, and Sakai are great examples of how schools are using this new kind of open, cost-effective learning.

I totally agree with the author's approach. To put it simply: figthing against the future will take us nowhere. It makes far more sense to row with the water stream, as long as we make sure we remain in control of our own little kayak. That's how innovative social trends have always worked. By the way, that last paragraph I quoted from the article is also a good argument in favor of introducing our kids to open source software. {link to this story}

[Tue Dec 29 14:27:58 CET 2009]

A friend passed me the link to the Linux XP website, a distribution that attempts to look and feel like Windows XP as much as possible and, judging by the screenshots, definitely accomplishes it. There was a time (several years ago) when something like this would get me really excited. I'd see it as a huge leap forward to facilitate the conversion of many Windows users to Linux. However, it has rained a lot since, to be honest. Today, I don't think that looking and feeling like Windows represents any advantage or step forward for Linux at all. As a matter of fact, if anything, I see it as a sort of copycat strategy that is doomed to fail in the long run. But why? Let's see. To start with, the advantage that one would enjoy from running something like Linux XP (i.e., using a familiar interface at a cheaper price) doesn't outweigh the potential disadvantages (issues with drivers, problems to run certain applications, inability to run most major games, etc.), especially since pirated software is still easily accessible. Why bother? After all, no matter how much like the original this thing is, there will still be differences. The users are still bound to run into some scenarios (even if it's just corner cases) where Linux XP will just not behave like Windows XP. At that point, it will just cause confusion, since the user's expectatives weren't properly set from the beginning by clearly showing him/her that this is a different operating system. Secondly, we also condemn the user to miss on a lot of Linux-specific features that could actually justify running something other than Windows: availability of multiple desktop environments and window managers that completely change the user interface, the power of the command line, the desktop pager, etc. In other words, we content ourselves with cutting corners off Linux and forcing it to fit into the shape of a lesser (in my opinion) product. Finally, we also give up on truly innovating and being ahead of the competition, choosing instead to follow on Microsoft's footsteps for ever and ever, which doesn't strike me as particularly clever. So, as I said, although I am definitely awed by the screenshots, I don't see Linux XP as a leap forward anymore. {link to this story}

[Mon Dec 28 20:57:50 CET 2009]

Interesting piece. I just read an article titled Forget E-Books: The Future of the Book Is Far More Interesting, published on the Fast Company website, that argues, as it happened before with other inventions, the E-book is only a transition to something bigger:

Take note: The first battlefield tanks looked like heavily armored tractors equipped with cannons; early automobiles were called "horseless carriages" for a reason; the first motorcycles were based on bicycles; the first satellite phones were as clunky as your household telephone. A decade ago, when newspapers began serving up stories over the Web, the content mirrored what was offered in the print edition. What the tank, car and newspaper have in common is they blossomed into something far beyond their initial prototypes. In the same way that an engineer wouldn't dream of starting with the raw materials for a carriage to design a rad new sports car today, newspapers won't use paper or ink anymore. Neither will books. But mere text on a screen, the stuff that e-books are made of, won't be enough.

The first movie cameras were used to film theater productions. It took early cinematic geniuses like Sergei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, Charlie Chaplin and Abel Gance to untether the camera from what was and transform it into what it would become: a new art form. I believe that this dynamic will soon be replayed, except it will star the book in the role of the theater production, with authors acting more like directors and production companies than straight wordsmiths. Like early filmmakers, some of us will seek new ways to express ourselves through multimedia. Instead of stagnant words on a page we will layer video throughout the text, add photos, hyperlink material, engage social networks of readers who will add their own videos, photos, and wikified information so that these multimedia books become living, breathing, works of art. They will exist on the Web and be ported over to any and all mobil devices that can handle multimedia, laptops, netbooks, and beyond. (Hey, Apple, are you listening?)

The author of the article goes then to throw out there a few other suggestions about the future of the book that would certainly make it something far more enticing that today's form, be it on paper or electronic format. For the core of his criticism is correct: we have done little but to transfer the old book format to a new medium, but haven't managed to see its potential yet. When it comes to digital books, we are currently at the same stage as we were with the web back in the early 1990s, when we thought that we only had to convert our texts to HTML format and we would be done. Man, were we mistaken! {link to this story}

[Mon Dec 28 20:48:45 CET 2009]

Apple's R&D labs continue working on new cool stuff, according to the press. ArsTechnica carries a story on the latest work by Apple engineers on automated 3D point-of-view displays. Basically, the product allows the computer to automatically adjust 3D objets being displayed on the monitor as the user's head changes positions. If we are to believe the author, the technology has already been patented by Apple and they are considering applying the same tecnique to 2D objects too.

{link to this story}

[Mon Dec 28 20:42:52 CET 2009]

I have been using Google Redesigned for a few days now, and sort of like it. It's basically a CSS template that changes the looks of your GMail, Google Reader or Google Calendar interface. I don't really like the default theme much (too dark and not so easy on the eye) but perhaps there are other themes to choose from. {link to this story}

[Mon Dec 28 20:35:53 CET 2009]

Just came across of Synapse, a new and awesome looking IM client for Linux. It may be worth a try.

{link to this story}

[Mon Dec 21 16:02:50 CET 2009]

The gender gap in computer science has been debated to exhaustion. However, the new approach reported by Wired Science is sort of interesting (and amusing). It now seems that nerdy or geeky image in general is what keeps women away from computer science studies:

New research published in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that the stereotype of computer scientists as unwashed nerds may be partially responsible for the dearth of women in the field, as shown by National Science Foundation statistics.

"what this research shows is that the image of computer science —this geeky, masculine image— can make women feel like they don't belong," says lead author Sapna Cheryan of the University of Washington.

(...)

Previous research has found that a person can get a good sense of what another individual is like just from spending a few minutes perusing that person's bedroom. Cheryan wondered if the same was true of classrooms.

"You can get a message about whether you want to join a certain group just by seeing the physical environment that that group is associated with," Cheryan says. "You walk in, see these objects and think, 'This is not me.'"

Cheryan and colleagues tested this idea by alternately decorating a computer science classroom with objects that earlier surveys pegged as stereotypically geeky —Star Trek posters, videogames and comic books— or with objects that the surveys found to be neutral —coffee mugs, plants and art posters. Thirty-nine college students spent a few minutes in the room, then filled out a questionnaire on their attitudes toward computer science.

Women who spent time in the geeky room reported less interest in computer science than women who saw the neutral room. For male students, however, the room's décor made no difference.

I know, I know, the results fit into the ages old stereotype that women do pay attention to the deecoration and men couldn't care less, right? In any case, the conclusions are intersting, I think. So, you see, if we truly want to promote computer science among women, forget about those Star Trek, Star Wars and other scifi geeky stuff. Be warned. {link to this story}

[Fri Dec 18 16:26:46 CET 2009]

If, like me, you are a mutt user and have several (perhaps too many) email accounts, you'd perhaps like to configure it to use different sender profiles. Well, in that case you may be glad to hear that the solution is quite easy: just install and configure muttprofile. It works beautifully. Once installed, create a few profile.* files under the ~/.mutt directory and add macros like these to your ~/.muttrc file:

macro   index       ":source ~/.mutt/profile.default\n" "Load default profile"
macro   index       ":source ~/.mutt/profile.personal\n" "Load profile: personal"

It works fine and, like everything mutt-related, it is highly configurable, since you can still configure whichever hooks or whatever else you want in the individual profiles. {link to this story}

[Mon Dec 14 15:58:00 CET 2009]

I have spent some time the last couple of weeks toying around with Google Wave and am not sure yet this is such a revolutionary tool. True, it does look innovative. Yes, the idea of combining messaging, email and document collaboration in a single tool that can be accessed from anywhere and with any operating system is appealing. Yet, I still cannot see the real-life use. Better said. I can see it in theory. Sure, it's ideal for any team that is putting together a project in collaborative manner. Still, I am not sure it is earth-shattering enough to move people away from the old application environment. In any case, whether you like it or not, there is a good chance that Google Wave may spread around and become an important tool, which is why it is a good thing to see that Mozilla Labs has started a new project, called Raindrop, to provide a similar service from a completely open perspective. Here is an introductory video:

Raindrop UX Design and Demo from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.

As you can see, it goes beyond Google Wave. {link to this story}

[Sun Dec 13 13:08:30 CET 2009]

I like the Chrome Features video posted on YouTube by the Google Chrome UK folks. It's quite creative.

{link to this story}

[Fri Dec 11 13:45:32 CET 2009]

Computer World published an article with the first impressions of an alpha version of Google Chrome OS. I must say I am sort of excited about this. I have been running Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my EeePC 901 for a while now and I love it, but in the last year or so I have been growing increasingly dependent on the Google cloud, so to speak (I know, there are reasons to worry about that too, but overall I feel quite comfortable with it). Their services are convenient, reliable, mobile and, above all, open. I can access them through the browser, a regular email client... heck, even using my favorite, mutt. For the most part, Google has stuck to its "Don't be evil" motto, as far as I can see. On top of that, they continue being innovative and provide me with an ever growing array of web apps and tools that truly make my life easier. {link to this story}

[Fri Dec 11 13:37:52 CET 2009]

Check out this designer laptop of the future idea:

{link to this story}