Monthly Archive:: February 2013

This is amazing. Not only has Google just opened up the pre-order program for Google Glass to 'creative individuals', it has also unveiled what the user interface looks like and how it works. It's... Nothing short of amazing. I'm throwing money, credit cards, my car keys, my house keys, my Surface RT, my cats, everything at my screen. I want this so bad.

"This is the problem: You want to open a file using something other than the default application. You right-click its icon in the Finder, choose Open With, and a submenu pops up with an absurd number of duplicate entries." This is so annoying. Dr. Dang made a little addition to .bashrc so you can fix it with a single command. Now it's up to Apple to actually fix the problem (via Daring Fireball).

"This release includes many new features and improvements over Tizen 1.0 released in April, and Tizen 2.0 alpha in September, 2012. As a Tizen 2.0 developer, you will find strong HTML5/W3C APIs and a new native framework." Are any of you doing any Tizen-related work? How is it?

As PC prospects decline, Microsoft has been moving toward a hybrid, cross-platform future with an eye toward opportunities in the server closet and the cloud. But the question remains, How might Microsoft evolve to get there? "It's tempting to say the past five years has seen Microsoft's desktop-centric strategy slowly give way to a pell-mell free-for-all made up of equal parts desktop, server, mobile hardware and software, cloud services, and auxiliary systems like the Xbox. Truth is, intention has always been present. It's only now, thanks to major upheavals in consumer tech and the cloud, that Microsoft's broad-spectrum plays are becoming more evident and critical. What may be new for Microsoft is the need to better cohere its strategy around an ever-widening array of services and technologies, especially as the breadth of competition it faces widens. Most of all, if there ever comes a time to stop being a consumer-oriented company, Microsoft shouldn't flinch. A future where Microsoft doesn't make hardware or end-user programs seems remote, but there was a time when IBM abandoning its PC business seemed jarring, too." And if Microsoft can't quite cohere its strategy, the best means to this end may be to divide.

Linux kernel 3.8 has been released. This release includes support in Ext4 for embedding very small files in the inode, which greatly improves the performance for these files and saves some disk space. There is also a new Btrfs feature that allows to replace quickly a disk, a new filesystem F2FS optimized for SSDs, support of filesystem mount, UTS, IPC, PID, and network namespaces for unprivileged users, accounting of kernel memory in the memory resource controller, journal checksums in XFS, an improved NUMA policy redesign and, of course, the removal of support for 386 processors. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full list of changes.

"The last time we looked at Silicon Valley's lobbying efforts, Google was the big spender and Apple the piker. That hasn't changed much in the past nine months. In fact, Google increased its political spending in 2012 - a Presidential election year - by nearly 90%, while Apple reduced its by 13%." Anti-SOPA or no, that's a hell of a lot of money. This should be illegal - it's thinly veiled corruption.

"Images and open source code for the Touch Developer Preview of Ubuntu will be published on Thursday 21st February, supporting the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones. They are intended for enthusiasts and developers, to familiarise themselves with Ubuntu's smartphone experience and develop applications on spare handsets. Tools that manage the flashing of the phone will be available on the same day in the Ubuntu archives, making it easy to keep a device up to date with the latest version of the Touch Developer Preview." Cool. Too bad it's only for Nexus phones, and not for more popular ones.

"Since I left my job at Amazon I have spent a lot of time reading great source code. Having exhausted the insanely good idSoftware pool, the next thing to read was one of the greatest game of all time: Duke Nukem 3D and the engine powering it named 'Build'. It turned out to be a difficult experience: The engine delivered great value and ranked high in terms of speed, stability and memory consumption but my enthousiasm met a source code controversial in terms of organization, best practices and comments/documentation. This reading session taught me a lot about code legacy and what helps a software live long." Hail to the king, baby.

"Sebastian Holst makes yoga mobile apps with his wife, a yoga instructor. The Mobile Yogi is sold in all the major mobile app stores. But when someone buys his app in the Google Play store, Holst automatically gets something he says he didn't ask for: the buyer's full name, location and email address. He says consumers are not aware that Google Inc. is sharing their personal information with third parties. No other app store transmits users' personal information to third-party developers when they buy apps, he said." Oh Google.

"Having failed to carve out a place for itself in the post-PC era, Hewlett-Packard is now taking drastic measures - by adopting Google's Android operating system to run a series of upcoming mobile devices. It's a bit of a Hail Mary pass for HP, which has fallen years behind its rivals in the mobile space. It's also a big win for Google, which adds another powerful partner to the Android ecosystem." Ugh.

Firefox 3.0.19 is being beta tested on IRIX. Yeah, I know, Firefox 3.x is really old. But this is a big deal for IRIX users, who have been stuck on Firefox 2.0.22 for years. With this breakthrough, I expect to see 3.5 or 3.6 follow soon. Not sure how much more recent than that can be accomplished.

"Valve today announced the release of its Steam for Linux client. In celebration of the release, over 50 Linux titles are now 50-75% off until Thursday, February 21st at 10 AM PST. The Steam client is now available to download for free from the Ubuntu Software Center. Ubuntu is the most popular distribution of Linux used by millions of people globally and known for its well-designed, easy-to-use customer experience." The beginning of the Steambox. We're on the cusp of a sea change in the gaming world.

"Several changes, some bugfixes and a major testing effort bring me to release a new version of the SCHED_DEADLINE patchset (v7). In addition, given the fact that the project has been around for quite some time with always a positive feedback from the community and since we have reached a stable and tested set of functionalities, I think it is time to remove the RFC tag."

"If you're paying attention to what's going on in the design world, you've probably noticed the ongoing debate around skeuomorphism vs. flat design." Good overview of the subject from Sacha Greif. This is a very important point: "But where the main victim of realism is merely good taste, taking minimalism too far can have serious consequences on usability. Users have come to rely on a lot of subtle clues to make their way through an interface: buttons have slight gradients and rounded corners, form fields have a soft inner shadow, and navigation bars 'float' over the rest of the content. Remove all these clues, and you end up with a flat world where every element is suddenly placed at the same level, potentially leading to confusion: Is this a button, or simply a banner? Will anything happen if I tap this?"