Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Kinda. Users can “approve” or “bundle” web site hits from Blekko.com’s searches. The site, “launched” on Monday, is kinda like a new version of the old DMOZ. In fact, it is done by the same group. Interesting. Will it replace Google? Doubtful.

Blekko Aims to Slash Away Shady Search Results

“Blekko, a new search engine that launched in beta Monday, uses a wiki-like model to deliver results. Volunteers work to categorize the Web by creating slashtags for topics and weeding out malware and spam sites. For searches that don’t fall within a slashtag category, Blekko uses its proprietary ranking algorithms to deliver relevant results from its Web crawl, which covers 3 billion pages.”

According to Baseline Magazine, “Younger employees’ use of social and collaborative technology actually lags behind that of older workers, according to a new survey from Citrix Online.” Interesting! So, us “Baby Boomer” geeks are more sociable than our younger “Gen Y” counterparts! Wow. Guess they are anti-social! Maybe it is because we remember social interaction with other humans before we were linked only by machines. Though some of us (like the Doctor) are more comfortable with machines (computers) than hooo-mons!

Surprising Trends in Social Media

“Younger employees’ use of social and collaborative technology actually lags behind that of older workers, according to a new survey from Citrix Online. The most enthusiastic adopters of social tools are older Baby Boomers, defined in the survey as those 55 years or older. These workers are texting and networking online in far greater numbers than their younger counterparts. The survey also focuses on generational attitudes about meetings and other workplace topics, and measures American attitudes against those held in other nations. ‘The workforce is more dispersed and mobile than ever,’ says Bernardo de Albergaria, vice president and general manager of global marketing and ecommerce at Citrix Online. ‘There is some tension with the findings between the way people actually work and the communication methods they think are most effective. Things are in flux.’ Forrester Consulting conducted the survey for Citrix, overseeing an online survey of nearly 800 information workers evenly split among the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Australia.”

I have Vudu on my Visio Blu-Ray Player at home. It is pretty cool! In fact, my Player came with $15.00 in free rentals, which I have to use before the end of this month! So, I had better get busy this weekend and watch some stuff! Anyway, the Boxee Box looks cool… but, I am leaning toward the Roku box… more on that when I finally get one, or the other! The bottom line is, the future is Streaming Video on the Internet (IPTV!) You have heard it here on the Doctor’s Blog for years!

Right Place, Right Time: Vudu streaming movie service hits Boxee

“Streaming video on demand service Vudu will be available on all forms of Boxee in November, the company announced Thursday. This partnership will put a Vudu client on both the D-Link Boxee Box and the Boxee media center software for PC and Mac.

The service offers 480p, 720p, and 1080p HD movie rentals, and gets many movies in conjunction with their DVD launch. Though the service first launched as a standalone set top box back in 2007, it eventually became a video solution embedded in TVs and connected Blu-ray players.

Vudu’s shift to being an embedded service looks to have been timed perfectly, and it is now available on products from LG, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba and Vizio. In early 2010, Vudu was acquired by Wal-Mart, cementing its place in the burgeoning for-pay video streaming market alongside Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Blockbuster.

Now, with a place in the Boxee Box, Vudu finds itself again in the right place at the right time. Set top boxes that stream content ‘over the top’ (OTT) of an internet connection are hot items right now, and Boxee will be competing with Google TV and the Logitech Revue set top box, Apple’s newly redesigned AppleTV, and Roku’s streaming media player, now sold in retail through Netgear.”

So, there has long been a “fuss” among Linux wonks about “KDE?” or “Gnome?” Well, Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) say, “Unity!” The new Unity interface is built on Gnome, but it is different! Interesting choice, Canonical!

Ubuntu drops GNOME in favor of homegrown Unity UI

“The ‘Unity’ user interface that debuted in Ubuntu 10.10’s Netbook Edition will be standard on the next version of the Ubuntu Desktop Edition as well. Ubuntu Desktop 11.04 will replace the Linux distribution’s default GNOME desktop environment in favor of the multitouch-enabled Unity interface, says Ubuntu sponsor Canonical.

Making the announcement at a keynote Oct. 25 at Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Fla., Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s founder, said Ubuntu Desktop 11.04 will swap out the GNOME user interface in favor of the Unity interface that is now available on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition (UNE).
‘We conceived some work a time ago focused on netbooks that we want to bring to desktops,’ Shuttleworth said.

Canonical introduced Unity, the multitouch interface, this month with Ubuntu 10.10 (‘Maverick Meerkat’) UNE. Unity gives users 3D graphics support and better touchscreen enablement. The desktop/laptop version of Ubuntu 10.10 still has the long-standing GNOME 2.2 interface by default.”

I have finished an “upfit,” and “re-branding,” of the Dr. Bill.TV web site! It is the new “go to” place for Dr. Bill -The Computer Curmudgeon videos! It would be REALLY great if you would consider subscribing to this feed for the new, re-launched show! If you go to the site, you will see lot’s of ways to subscribe at the bottom of the main page. Enjoy the geekiness!

Dr. Bill.TV Web Site

More stuff coming soon on the next Netcast! Stay tuned!

Also, feel free to “spam” your friends with email about how strange, silly, and high tech weird the Dr. Bill Show is!

Limewire has been shutdown. And, I must admit, I am not disturbed by that. I have cleaned up tons o’ PCs of my friends that, after using Limewire, became severely infected from bogus crapware that came through Limewire! After a four-year legal battle… they have been ordered to close up shop.

Limewire shut down after four-year patent infringement battle

“After an arduous four years in and out of the courtroom, battling the RIAA over copyright infringement accusations, peer to peer file sharing service Limewire has finally been shut down. The RIAA’s suit against Limewire was part of a sweeping initiative to curb the trade of copyrighted materials on peer-to-peer networks. In 2005, the group sent cease and desist letters to the owners of major p2p services including Kazaa, WinMX, i2Hub, eDonkey, BearShare, and LimeWire. The orders demanded the services ‘immediately cease-and-desist from enabling and inducing the infringement of RIAA member sound recordings,’ but gave the services the option to discuss ‘pre-litigation resolutions.’ Most services complied, such as Kazaa, which offered a $115 million settlement. The RIAA eventually had to haul Limewire into court. ‘Despite numerous efforts to engage LimeWire, the site’s corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model that adequately respects copyrights,’ the RIAA said at the time. After a protracted court battle, US District Court Judge Kimba Wood handed down her summary judgement in favor of the RIAA last May. As it turned out, the RIAA’s legal team presented Limewire’s ‘smoking gun’ in court back in 2008: e-mail communications that showed the service was built with the illegality of file sharing taken fully into account. Today, the service was shut down.”

This sounds like it will be a cool, new technology when we have it in our hands! Cool!

“Wi-Fi Direct certification has begun. The Wi-Fi Alliance announced today that products from Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Ralink, Realtek, and Cisco will be the first Certified Wi-Fi Direct hardware in the test bed for the new wireless networking standard.

The key feature of the new Wi-Fi Direct standard is that it lets devices with 802.11 wireless radios communicate directly with one another without the need of a wireless router between them. Wi-Fi Direct devices near one another can transfer content at speeds 25 times faster than they could with Bluetooth 2.0. As a result, the standard has been referred to as a Bluetooth Killer in IEEE meetings.

‘We designed Wi-Fi Direct to unleash a wide variety of applications which require device connections, but do not need the internet or even a traditional network,’ said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. ‘Wi-Fi Direct empowers users to connect devices – when, where and how they want to, and our certification program delivers products that work well together, regardless of the brand.'”

I think so. Apple just announced record profits. You would think Jobs would be happy, but I think he sees Android and Google as a real, serious threat.

What is Steve Jobs so afraid of?

“There’s a saying that the more you have, the more you fear losing it.Apple’s CEO made a surprise appearance during yesterday’s fiscal 2010 fourth quarter earnings call. Jobs said he couldn’t resist participating, given Apple’s record $20.34 billion revenue. But he leveled most of his comments at competitors, and in quite defensive posture. Now why is that? Apple’s iPhone blew past Wall Street estimates by as many as 3 million units. The iPad outsold Macs and, according to Gartner and IDC analysts, sucked sales away from Windows netbooks and low-cost notebooks. Apple controls the largest and most successful applications store on the planet. The company sits on a cash horde of more than $51 billion. Then there are the quarterly results, which topped consensus estimates by nearly $2 billion.”

Yet, Jobs fussed about Android, and tried to diminish it.

“Jobs moved on to Google and recent statements by Eric Schmidt, its CEO and former Apple board member, about there being 200,000 Android activations per day and 90,000 apps in the Android Marketplace. “Apple has activated about 275,000 iOS devices per day on average for the past 30 days” with the number topping 300,000 some days, Jobs asserted. It’s an apple and oranges comparison. Apple isn’t just activating iPhones but iPads and iPod touches, too. Nearly all Androids are phones; for now. It’s a me-too claim that demonstrates Jobs’ fear Android may do to iPhone what Windows did to the Mac during the 1980s and 1990s.”

Interesting. I think Jobs is sweating. And Android rocks. Just sayin’!

So… it all started when I noticed that OpenOffice.org wasn’t getting frequent updates anymore. I figured something was up. I even figured it had to do with Oracle buying Sun Microsystems, who had “owned” and sponsored OpenOffice.org. Now, come to find out, the developers that were constantly developing and updating OpenOffice.org have left OOo to form “The Document Foundation” and start a fork of the project called LibreOffice.

“Libre” is, of course, “free” and the new version, which is in beta, is free as well, in the fine tradition of Open Source! It looks like LibreOffice may eventually even be better than OpenOffice! The Document Foundation is also backed by such Linux veterans as Red Hat, Novell, Google (Android) and Canonical!

Here’s what their “Welcome” Page has to say about “The Document Foundation:”

“It is an independent self-governing meritocratic Foundation, created by leading members of the OpenOffice.org Community.
It continues to build on the foundation of ten years’ dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org Community.
It was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent Foundation brings out the best in contributors and will deliver the best software for users.
It is open to any individual who agrees with our core values and contributes to our activities.
It welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community.
The Document Foundation is proud to be the home of LibreOffice, the next evolution of the world’s leading free office suite.”

For more info check the link here:

The Document Foundation Mission and Team

In the meantime, I would stick with your OpenOffice installtion until they are out of Beta… but, then, hummmmm… I think I will switch!

Check it out! ARS Technica has a neat article on the new Ubuntu 10.10… it looks like it is worthy of a download and install on my netbook!

Ubuntu 10.10 arrives with impressive new netbook environment

“Canonical has announced the availability of Ubuntu 10.10, a major update of the popular Linux distribution. The new version introduces the Unity netbook environment, which offers a custom desktop shell that is optimized for ease of use on small displays and has a global menubar to conserve vertical screen space. Ubuntu’s installer got a major overhaul in this release, with substantial user interface improvements and new features. The new installer can start downloading updated packages during the early stages of the configuration process in order to save the user from having to run a full update immediately after installation. It also has a new option that lets users choose to automatically install closed-source components, such as multimedia codecs.”