The world as frankps sees it!
Linux
Free as in what?
Here’s the story on how OLPC died
0It was a beautiful idea, almost to good to be true, or was that just what it was? A 100 dollar laptop with only free, open source software. It was to run Linux, a special scaled down version of Redhat. The foundation and Nicholas Negroponte for that reason turned down Steve Jobs’offer of getting Apple OSX free of charge!
Finally also children in the third world would get the chance to use a computer and the Internet, was my thought, just as so many others must have believed. But soon the computer was costing far more, and then no one seemed want the computers. Well, not entirely true, but they had to be bought in such a large number that only a few countries did.
This week Microsoft announced an agreement with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) that will make Windows XP available on the non-profit’s low-cost laptops for third-world children. The foundation have agreed to pay 3 dollars per license. Funny, cause they could have used MacOS X for free. The blue screen of death in many ways symbols the death of the OLPC project. I guess the Sugar interface project will live on, but why would developers continue with the OLPC project? Sugar can already run onFedora, Debian and Ubuntu, and was developed to be a platform for educational software and that could very well even run on Windows.
And many have jokefully said: “Thank goodness third world children will no longer have to struggle to learn Linux…“. Well, this time it was all about bad management. As Ivan Krstic said it on his blog:
Nicholas’new OLPC is dropping those pesky education goals from the mission and turning itself into a 50-person nonprofit laptop manufacturer, competing with Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Asus, HP and Intel on their home turf, and by using the one strategy we know doesn’t work. But hey, I guess they’ll sell more laptops that way.
As so often, a dream is not enough.
Spicebird – An Enhanced Thunderbird Client
3Today I learned about Spicebird, an open source Mozilla-based collaboration application. The application is developed by the Indian company Synovel Technologies, and is based on Thunderbird, Sunbird/Lightning and SamePlace.
Spicebird is still in an early stage of development, it’s current release is only v0.4. But having said that a lot of features is already implemented, and the application is ready to use. The developers have also published a roadmap, with quite a few interesting planed features:
- Blogs as Email (Thunderbird addon/Spicebird built-in)
- Post to blogs just as you send mails to your friends
- See comments as replies to your mail
- Instant Messaging
- UI improvements to make is as easy as typical IM application
- Store IM conversations
- Home screen applet for buddy list
- Better chat window
- Integration with a CMS (Drupal)
- Document management
- Microsoft Exchange connector
- A more meaningful address book
- Last conversation/chat with a contact
I must say that the roadmap includes a lot of features that I really am looking forward to. My big question when having tried and perhaps started to use Spicebird, is what about MailCo? Will these two projects work together? Another question is, do we need MailCo?
I have a few suggestions for functionality that should be added to the roadmap:
- The installer should search for Thunderbird settings and if you want to import your mails, addresses and settings, as I guess many of your users will be previous Thunderbird users.
- The configuration tool that runs the first time you start, let you choose to set up a Gmail account, but why not rather let the user write in his/her Google account name and password. Spicebird could then check what Google services you are using, gmail, gtalk and gcal etc. and ask which of the services the user would like to configure to use with this application.
- Use online maps in the address book, Yahoo Maps or Google Maps. A small map (for instance 240×320 pixels or user defined for export to phones like iPhone) should be part of the address card.
- Work with developers of Firefox Microformat plugin developers, so that address information on a webpage can be easily imported, also with map information.
- Auto-detection of SSL and TLS for the e-mail client.
- Add STARTTLS support in the IM client.
If any of the Spicebird devs should stumble upon this blog entry, surprise me please!
And WOW, this is blog entry number 400!!!
My New Wireless Solution
0Welcome to my Apple equipped home, and let me introduce you to my latest device: Time Capsule.
Time Capsule is first of all a wireless accesspoint, but also a 500 GB Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. Needless to say, it works seamlessly with MacOS X 10.5′s inbuilt backup solution Time Machine. But it is not restricted to working with only 10.5 or MacOS X, and is of course also working with Windows and Linux. But having said that, Time Capsule only comes with installation and administration software for MacOS X and Windows. The setup takes a matter of minutes, and once it’s up and running, its disk drive is visible to any computer on the network.
As you can see from this first screenshot, Apple has done it real easy to set Time Capsule up for you and they have also made some sensible security choices for you: WEP is not an option. As this device is not for the enterprise, only WPA/WPA 2 Personal is available as wireless security.