So I’m sure it hasn’t escaped people’s attentions that Google Mail had a little bit of downtime this week. A combination of my body clock being on the fritz and our internet connection being about as reliable as the average freelancer, meant that I missed most of it - thankfully.

This downtime certainly got Google a lot of press - because a *hell* of a lot of people use their services. I use Google Apps for all my domains on my server and would never turn back to hosting my own e-mail. I have used Google Apps for quite some time now and I can’t actually think of a single time where I’ve had any e-mail down time. So to have a few hours worth of down-time, in the grand scheme of things, is nothing - especially when you consider that Gmail is still a “Beta” (snigger…) and that it’s a completely free service. No e-mails were lost and you could still access them over POP3/IMAP, which takes 30 seconds to setup. So come on guys - give Google a break.

This still highlights an issue I bought up recently of our dependence on the internet and the cloud - as looking at my twitter feed, people were struggling left right and centre due to the lack of e-mail. Be prepared!

My internet service has been really troublesome the past few weeks (as mentioned) - we think due to noise on the line. However, BT gave us the run around and suggested that if they sent out an engineer and no fault was found it would cost us quite a bit of money. So we tried different filters, modems, cables and finally moved to BE Broadband, to eliminate the exchange as the issue. We’re on BE now and it seems fairly reliable (apparantly ADSL2+ is better at coping with noisy lines) but we’re getting about half the speed that we should, probably due to the line noise. So having eliminated all these issues, I think we’re confident enough to get a BT engineer involved. Here’s hoping!

Some of you may remember me recently talking about not wanting to upgrade from the Ubuntu 8.04 based Mint Linux on my primary machine. During this down-time I found the one thing that has made me want to upgrade - 3G Dongles. I’ve had to resort to using Ubuntu Intrepid inside a VirtualBox VM to work with the dongle I have for the times when the internet was just too unreliable. I’d really quite like to simply be able to plug it in and go, which Intrepid supports. Rummaging around my bits and bobs I found a 32GB SSD drive that Crucial sent me for an article a while back. So I’ve decided I’ll install Intrepid on to this and then casually move stuff across from my old install. After installing Intrepid on my girlfriends notebook last week (an experiment I’m watching eagerly), I was reminded that it doesn’t take long at all to get it setup with all the bells and whistles

I’ve been wanting to try out alternative Linux distros on my EeePC 701 for a while, but I’ve not done it - primarily because the default Xandros based operating system is so damned good, for what I need it for. 20 second boot up time and I can start writing on the train - perfect.

However, when I saw this guide on installing Android on the 701, I felt I really had to give it a shot, so I jumped in with both feet. Generally speaking, I compile things only when strictly necessary, so my machine isn’t exactly setup for it. Although the article has a fairly good list of dependencies - I did need a few extra, so I found myself wading through output looking for generated errors. Eventually, I got it compiled, and stuck it on a USB flash disk.

The article did mention it would wipe the hard drive, but I thought it would also give you a prompt to confirm you wanted to do this and was hoping I could trick it into installing to an SD card instead. I really should have read this article, with a big flashing red warning about this fact. Oh well - I can always hunt out the install CD and put Xandros back on - it’s not as if I modified it (much).

So Android installed and booted, generally a lot less painful than I was expecting. Awesome! So now what. The mouse doesn’t work (designed for touch screen) and the Wi-Fi doesn’t work. Not the end of the world - but no word processor either. Sigh!

A lovely technology demo, but in reality - a pointless exercise right now. Nobody is offering Netbooks with Android on, yet, so developers have yet to add the required functionality in. But I don’t imagine it’ll be long before we see it and I’ll revisit it then.

So, having (accidently) removed Xandros, I figured I may as well take this opportunity to take a look at some of the other EeePC distributions around. I tried several, and all had their good and bad points (something I’ll have to cover in more detail later), but most of them took too long to boot up. I imagine part of this is due to the slow 600MHz CPU on the 701 and the Atom based units probably wouldn’t struggle anywhere near as much.

However, the distribution I settled on (for the moment) is an EeePC specific version of CrunchBang Linux, called CrunchEEE. This has been optimised with a lean Kernel for the EeePC, and had the fastest boot time of them all, being around 50 seconds from pressing the on button to a working desktop. This sacrifice of time does yield many benefits.

For starters, it has a system tray icon allowing you to control the over and under clocking of the processor - allowing you to put it into a “powersave” mode. Perfect for word processing and put the estimated battery life up to over 5 hours. Being based on Ubuntu Intrepid, it has the benefit of allowing me to install any software that I’m using to using on my desktop machine rather than using the crippled Asus/Xandros repos.

Unlike using an off the shelf Linux distro - it also supports the Wireless/Network out of the box and more importantly my ZTE MF622 3G dongle which I have terrible trouble getting to work on most Linux machines.

After using gOS for a short period on the EeePC, and liking it, I found myself pining for a Mac-like Dock. I installed Cairo and configured it with the only applications I tend to use, all through the GUI. OpenOffice Writer, Pidgin, Skype and FireFox.

Overall, It’s certainly worth checking out as an alternative, if Xandros isn’t quite cutting the mustard for you. Thanks to Colin of the Kent Linux User Group (KLUG) for suggesting that one

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m attempting to download the Windows 7 beta for the eighth time, while desperately trying to find something to occupy my time that isn’t on my massive “to do” list. I’m bored with Spore, I’ve already been to the gym and I’ve overplayed Guitar Hero. I need a distraction like thinkabouttech.com needs more writers.

One thing that I’ve been meaning to do for a while is upgrade my main machine - I’m still using the Ubuntu 8.04 based Linux Mint “Elyssa” as my operating system, which has now been superseded by the 8.10 based “Felicia”. I’m also still using OpenOffice 2.4, despite everyone going on about how good OO 3.0 is. Yet, I haven’t upgraded either. There are two big reasons for my tardiness - one is that I don’t need the new features offered and two is that my setup is damned near perfect! It boots quickly, I have access to everything I need, it’s stable and is still current enough to get the latest security updates. I find you need a good reason to update - usually something breaking or a feature that you really need, none of which apply to me. As they say - if it’s ain’t broke - don’t fix it! So for this weekend, I’ll be avoiding the upgrade and will play with the cat instead.

However, just for fun, let’s assume I am upgrading. I’ve been pondering over sticking with Mint Linux, or just moving back to Ubuntu. I really like Mint Linux because out of the box it’s how I want it, but I could summarise in two reasons as to why I like it over Ubuntu. One, it comes with the Medibuntu repositories as standard, which gives you better media encoding/decoding and two, the start menu - I really like the start menu, it’s a lot better than the classic Gnome.

However, just as Ubuntu is often accused of not putting enough back into the Debian/Linux code-base - why isn’t Mint making it’s code part of the Ubuntu code-base? It wouldn’t be hard to make the Mint start menu a package that any Ubuntu user could install. I can’t help but feel they are making a lot of work for themselves, especially when they reinvent the wheel in several places. So when I do come round to upgrade, I think I’m going to be heading back towards Ubuntu…

When I gave my web server a reinstall last, I decided to use Google Apps for all my e-mail needs. This reduces my backups (IMAP folders get big, quickly), increases my security, reduces the possibility of my server being turned into a spam relay and made setting the server up really quick. The problem is, it’s not just you that wants to send e-mails - any applications running on your server also need to send e-mails, for example when authenticating forum members or sending out password reminders.

One thing I didn’t think about when I did my server install, was that thinksecretsanta.com relies heavily on e-mails getting to people and that using the default configured Ubuntu postfix can cause a few issues with spam filters. So to get around this, I set up an SMTP relay - pushing all requests via the Gmail SMTP servers. This should significantly increase the chance of the e-mail getting through and was surprisingly easy to do.

The main article I followed was this one at Wormly. However, this is designed for CentOS, so there are a few things you need to change for Ubuntu Server, as I’m using.

Firstly, you should find postfix is already installed - If not, it’s simply “sudo apt-get install postfix”. Secondly, make sure you are in /etc/postfix before you create your new CA, or you’ll end up with errors later. Thirdly, in Ubuntu the script for creating a new CA is “/usr/lib/ssl/misc/CA.sh -newca”. Finally, before you run any of these scripts, it’s worth editing /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf and changing the default certificate time from 365 to 3650 days as suggested by this article. This will save you redoing this every year. Also remember that you will need to login as root, or append “sudo” to all of the commands or you’ll end up with permissions errors.

Aside from these minor differences, it is as simple as following the instructions. Then take a look at your /var/log/mail.log and it should tell if you it’s relaying mail successfully. Cripes - the things we have to do to counter the scourge that is spam!

I feel a little cheeky posting about this today, as simultaneously I saw this post suggesting that Windows needs package management. This is something I’ve thought for a while, so I thought I’d tackle the topic too.

So if you’ve not used one of the many Linux distributions, almost all of the big players use a package management system - Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu tend to use Aptitude/Synaptics and Fedora uses Yum. I personally don’t get on with Yum and it was one of the big reasons I moved away from Fedora ( used it from Core 3 to 8 ) to Ubuntu. But whatever you use - the function is the same - a singular database of most of the software available for your distribution. The software and its dependencies are but a few clicks away. Searching Synaptics for “photo editor” will bring up, amongst other things, GIMP. Very handy as the name isn’t exactly self explanatory. Let’s face it - “that photo has been GIMPed” just doesn’t have the same ring as “Photoshopped”.

Anyway - after selecting what you want, everything is downloaded, installed to your machine and you’re ready to start GIMPing. All the packages are signed and coming from a trusted source - so know that what you’re getting is the real deal. Realistically, using Synaptics you can hunt down and find a piece of software to do pretty much everything want. Not everything is in there, but then you can always go and hunt around SourceForge and compile from source or get the latest and greatest from GetDeb.

On Windows, the situation is very different as the only real option you have is to turn to your search engine of choice. I remember looking for a simple application to mass rename files not too long ago and Google is chocker with applications all promising to do exactly that. Most of them were filled with spyware, requesting money or just not doing what they said. I consider myself pretty good at Googling and I eventually found something - but not everyone is quite as good as separating wheat from chaff. I’ve had friends who have installed all sorts of things that I wouldn’t let anywhere near my PC.

Microsoft is very quick to blame third parties for Windows’ woes and frankly, it’s not a bad claim to make. There are a hell of a lot of supposed programmers out there, producing an awful lot of crap - crap that people need protecting from.

Okay - so Apple App Store anyone? Sure. That’s a great example of how package management really works well. Google and RIM obviously thinks it’s a model that works well too, as they are doing the same with the G1 and Storm. The biggest issue with the Apple Store is not so much that you have to pay to have your software included in the listing (although that is an issue) - it’s more the fact that it’s vetted by Steve Jobs himself which slows things down and makes it rather elitist. For something like this to work properly - it needs to be community driven. It doesn’t take long for a few humans to realise a piece of software is a piece of s**t and mark it accordingly.

I imagine I’m not the only person to have thought this and there must be websites out there with recommended listings of free software available for Windows. Feel free to comment with your advice, thoughts and links

A netbook that takes longer than 30 seconds to boot is not a netbook. Not everyone agrees with that, but I do strongly believe it to be a defining feature that separates netbooks from small notebooks. Size just isn’t an important enough reason for defining something as a netbook. It if was purely size related - why call it a “net” book in the first place? Why not picobook? To me the use of the word “net” suggests that internet use is its main use, which in itself suggests less than a full operating system and a cloud like environment. The small size is merely for the convenience of portability. Installing Vista, adding unreliable hard drives and making them bigger, blurs the line significantly and gets away from the point. I still feel the operating system on the EeePC is what differentiates it from the rest of the crowd. There is no coincidence that Asus and Acer control 90% of the netbook market and both have stripped down Linux based operating systems that boot in under 30 seconds.

Earlier in the year, I was doing a feature for Custom PC, using the incredibly small and light “Slitaz” Linux distribution. What started as me writing an article on it, ended with me knee deep in scripts and contributing a significant number of changes to the OS - making it possible to simply install it to a USB drive in a wizard like manner. I really liked the way the OS was only 22MB, yet had a modern look and everything you need from a Cloud OS - FireFox, Pidgin, GIMP etc. However, I think it needs to mature a little - mainly by adding in better network card support and wireless - so I am no longer using it on any of my machines.

Browsing the web today, I came across a story about gOS (Good OS) releasing a new, stripped down version of its operating system specifically for cloud use. This ticked all the boxes that Slitaz did, but as we know gOS is a little more mature. This also sounds pretty similar to the Asus SplashTop, but has the added benefit that it’s not under the Asus brand. This makes it considerably more likely to be adopted by other manufacturers. What I like about the OS is that it is not designed as a complete replacement - but it will boot up in a number of seconds, giving you a web browser that will do 90% of what you want. Then if you feel it necessary to load the entire OS, you can simply click a button to load your full-blown Windows or Linux OS.

The more I think about it - considering the Asus / Xandros operating system doesn’t take up much space at all (around 2GB). Why isn’t Asus bundling its OS with the Windows versions of the EeePC as well, but on an SD card that can be removed from the machine? Flash memory is so damned cheap now, after all.

So to get back to my original point - gOS Cloud could really level the playing field in the netbook market. Then I would be free to purchase one with a decent shift key without fear of getting a sub-standard OS…

Not too long ago, I was commenting on the fact that MSI has had a lot more netbooks returned with Linux installed, than Windows. What is interesting is that there is a recent report that Asus has found no skew in the number of returns in either way. Very interesting indeed - so what does this say?

Having used the pre-installed Linux on an MSI Wind, I can understand why people might want Windows instead. I don’t like using Suse. But with the EeePC, I would feel the other way round, happily chipping away on its modified Xandros OS. I wonder if the reason for Linux returns on the MSI Wind, is not because they were expecting Windows and it fell short - but that they were expecting the same Linux OS that they have seen on the EeePC? If you ask a lot of consumers what Linux is - they will describe the EeePC operating system, not the fully fledged systems like Ubuntu or Suse.

When shopping around for computers, Windows = Windows && Linux != Linux. As Stephen Fry has made a point of mentioning recently, Linux is merely the kernel. GNU/Linux comes in so many varieties and configurations that it is confusing the consumer. They consider Linux in the same way as they consider Windows and expect to buy any machine with Linux on and get the same experience on all of them, as you can with Windows. Linux has been “tick boxed”, just like Bluetooth support on a mobile phone, and manufacturers are sticking any old distribution on because they don’t know the difference. They think that Linux = Linux. They are wrong! The EeePC OS is one of the reasons I still recommend it over other devices, because it’s exactly what a netbook needs.

The diversity in Linux distributions is as much its strength as its weakness. In many respects this is why an Ubuntu monopoly would be a good thing (cue Fedora fanboy hate mail…) - they have the marketing and the consumer angle after all. Let the general public consider Ubuntu to be the only Linux, as it is after all, a pretty good representation, and then let anyone who wants to know more, discover the rest of the distributions available by themselves…

I found myself in a rather swanky hotel the other day being shown the latest in Eye Wear from Vuzix. At a consumer level, Vuzix make wearable displays - a pair of goggles, if you will, that through the use of tiny OLED displays can give you the equivalent of watching a 62″ TV, in your pocket.

I’ve got the budget model in at the moment for review, and so far I’ve been pretty impressed. I am although, a little undecided if I consider it a gimmick, or actually something I would use on a day to day basis. The top-end model with higher resolution and accelerometer ready to work with WoW certainly impressed me more, but I’ll have to take a look at those later.

One of the guys at the meeting, Ken Blakeslee, who was in fact an investor in the technology rather than internal to the company, made some interesting points when it came to portable projectors, which are the obvious comparison to such products. Let’s assume, and I don’t think I’m far off here, that portable projectors become small enough that you can integrate one into a mobile phone. Or, if they were just small and cheap enough to carry around alongside it. When would you use it? To get a decent size, it’s got to be 2 to 3 feet away from a surface. So that’s hardly ideal when you’re sitting on a train, with the back of another chair inches away from you. You could mount it on your shoulder, but you’d need some sort of autofocus to take care of movement. Obviously in this scenario, a pair of glasses that you could pull out of your pocket would be perfect. and immersive.

David Lock, Director of European Operations pulled out a suitcase which he wasn’t intending on doing, to give us a glimpse of what was to come. These units looked identical to a pair of rather stylish sunglasses, with wireless transmission and high resolution OLED displays. These were designed with sight augmentation in mind rather than just video playback. He envisioned overlays that gave you extra information as you were walking along, even perhaps a virtual avatar for people you are passing. Any Sci-Fi fans, or in fact anyone with a decent imagination can imagine how awesome something like this would be.

But a pair of glasses are quite personal - I’ve already tried handing my sample to other people and they first have to spend a few minutes adjusting the focus to suit their eyes - so it’s hardly ideal for mass sharing. This is where Ken felt a portable projector would come in handy. Want to show off a hilarious YouTube clip? You turn to the nearest wall/white t-shirt and blast away to your entire group of friends. It’s a very different market.

At

Creative has been promising drivers for quite some time now, and I’ve got an X-Fi still sitting in its box after discovering its lack of support in Linux. My rather expensive Shure SM7A setup feels rather pointless when using on board sound for recording in Audacity. So after years of wait and appalling closed-source binaries released, Creative has decided to release the code to the Open Source community, which can only mean good news for the rest of us.

There is enough of a community out there, that if you simply document your product and release the specifications - the drivers will get written. Of course, they don’t have to start from scratch either, as they can use other drivers as a basis and assimilate the X-Fi into the collective. This is seen a lot with network drivers. Frankly, developing a closed source driver was a big waste of resources when they could have simply chucked some code and documentation together and then let the OS community fill in the gaps.

One of the issues here, is that what makes Creative’s products unique is not just the hardware, but the software itself. You buy the card for both. I’m fairly sure I remember reading about people buying the cheaper Creative cards and using hacked drivers to enable the extra functions - so they are obviously trying to protect such things by keeping their drivers closed source. Are we now going to see Creative produced software technology being applicable to on-board sound devices, perhaps off-loaded to the CPU instead of the dedicated sound chip (that’s what all those cores are for - right?).

The market for sound cards has become very niche over the last few years - with most people quite happy to use on board sound instead. If Creative had to survive by sound card sales alone, they would been long gone. Does this release show a sign of giving up, perhaps a feeble gesture disguised as an embrace of the community? A quick Google turns up that “Creative Labs will be dismissing the majority of its employees across Europe”. Now join the dots and we see this is a great way of cutting budget. Still, at very least - this will make for an excellent case study that may well encourage other manufacturers to open up their drivers too. I’ll let the chaps at Phoronix fiddle a little first before I pull out my card - but it should be interesting.

Google has found itself in the news a little with mention of several Android bugs found - and patched I might add. The root access issue is frankly alarming that something so major could get through, but then we are reminded that the passcode on the iPhone does sweet FA. Anyone who codes will tell you how easily bugs happen, even in the simplest of systems - so let’s not start judging just yet. With today’s fast product turn around, it’s no wonder more are slipping through the net.

I’ve still been too busy to try Ubuntu 8.10 in any detail - partly because I’m running Mint Linux, which hasn’t been upgraded from 8.04 yet. It’s very tempting to switch back, but this machine is running so nicely! Anyone who is using Ubuntu might find these 50 top tips quite useful. I’m certainly going to have to try the “profile” Kernel option - it’s news to me!

Unlike most normal people - I spent my Saturday at the Linux Live Expo, held at London’s Olympia. Generally speaking - I was a little disappointed with the event, and if wasn’t for meeting up with members from the Kent Linux User Group, I would have gone home disappointed. There was a single hall, which was also shared with the Mac Expo, with a very small portion devoted to Linux. Most of the stalls had nothing on show and people there weren’t overly enthused about the companies they were there to represent. Maybe it’s because it was Saturday - the last day of the show.

Transtec had a pretty good booth and I was suitably impressed by their Mac-Mini competitor. Almost completely silent, Core 2 Duo and supporting multiple monitors by use of a break out cable. Would certainly fit the bill in my office.

Stalls aside - there were also some talks going on at the show. I happened to see two enthusiastic talks by Canoncial staff and caught the tail end of someone from IBM. Unfortunately, even these were aimed at people who had never heard of Linux - yet I knew full well that 90% of the audience already use Linux. Preaching to the converted? Quite possibly. A Linux expo isn’t exactly something you find yourself wondering into wondering what it is all about. Anyone from the Mac Expo? Well nothing that’s free can be good, can it?

The two chaps from Canonical - Christopher Kenyon and Malcom Yates had obvious enthusiasm for Ubuntu and I certainly felt we shared a lot of common attitudes, which is one of the reasons I moved from Fedora to Ubuntu - impressive forward thinking attitude. Both chaps were excited about the Netbook Remix of Ubuntu, and the MID (Mobile Internet Device) Remix too. Until I see boot-up times that compare with the OS on the EeePC, I won’t be switching anytime soon, but they are certainly thinking outside the box. My EeePC is a glorified type writer - all I ever really do is write articles. I’m more likely to browse the web on my phone. I still have these high capacity SD cards kicking around in my office, so I will give the NBR a go at some point soon.

From what I can gather, although 8.10 is going to have a whole host of improvements - the real killer improvement, in my eyes, is that of better 3G dongle support. One of the problems at the moment is that a lot of dongles are split-mode USB devices. When you first plug them in, they are a flash memory device. In Windows, you would then install the drivers and it would change the mode of the USB device from flash to a modem. In Linux, you currently need to do some manual mode switching. I’m looking forward to seeing how this has been dealt with. Mobile broadband is a huge growth area right now, and lack of Linux support is a big killer in the netbook arena.

Part of the IBM talk, which if I remember rightly was to do with Ubuntu use at IBM, the chap said “Nobody at IBM is using Vista”. I obviously felt this was both important and quote-worthy. A quick Google however and it appears to be old news that has simply slipped me by. But if a company like IBM can survive without Vista, that says a lot. Christopher Kenton did mention how in many countries, specifically Brazil, there had been a huge uptake of Open Source inside schools and finds it frustrating that there is so little interest in the UK - an opinion I share. Universities aren’t that much better either - where I was forced to code in .NET because none of the lecturers could mark PHP. No wonder I left.

When I was at school, my Dad was the IT teacher and I remember the frustration on his face when told he was not allowed to build his own machines for the IT department and they could only be purchased from a select few manufacturers - RM being one of them, which were charging insane rates for sub-standard machines. The sheer percentage of schools budgets that are being raped for IT use is sickening and something that really needs to be addressed.