Thursday, 9 December 2010
Chrome Store it's open for business
Thursday, 4 November 2010
KDE November Updates

Yesterday the KDE team announced the release of a series of updates concerning the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, KDE Applications and KDE Platforms. In my humble opinion, this excellent desktop environment, notwithstanding its greatness, do suffer a lot for the minor attenction that Canonical - which maintain Ubuntu, the most diffused linux distribution - deserve to it, in respect to Gnome (i.e., Kubuntu is clearly not as much developed as Ubuntu). Even if, also Gnome team is somewhat angry with Ubuntu, given the programmed switch to Unity Desktop....
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Steve Jobs on Android's Fragmentation
Apple's CEO says that Android is fragmented and that the open vs. closed dilemma is not important as long as Apple's proprietary mobile operating system manages to provide a better user experience.
My point on this: Steve Jobs may be right; i.e., the iOS ecosystem is certainly less fragmented and more homogeneous. I have an iPod and I do appreciate it. That's right.
But what he forgot to tell you, is the price you pay for this self-consistance: namely, the reduced possibility of choice. You have a lot of different choices for Android, from budget to high priced devices (for me, I'm quite fine with a rather inexpensive HTC WildFire).
Conversely, not too many choices are left to you, if you want an iOS device: an iPhone. What else?
Friday, 22 October 2010
Testing browsers on Mac OS X
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Ubuntu One Buzz

Well it seems that Ubuntu One is moving its first step into the social web; you can easily obtain a link for the song you're listening to. At variance with Apple's Ping, in Ubuntu One you can propagate this link to the (social) web, via all the services you've already set up in your microblogging client Gwibber. Far better than to have all inside iTunes only!
Oh, and as a nice surplus, you find your messages on Ubuntu One front page too. As an example, you can find on that web page a few of my recent played songs (user @mcastel);-)
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Mark Shuttleworth talks Project Harmony, Unity, Windicators and more
I do love the kubuntu community, and spend what some would consider an unreasonable amount on doing certain things twice but there is no philanthropic benefit to having TWO free desktops out there, that won’t help more folks embrace free software neither is there much commercial benefit in having two free desktops.
Great interview with Mark Shuttleworth, spanning a great range of related topics (from Kubuntu to Canonical and business models, not disregarding interesting motivational considerations... "Anyway, what matters to me is that our users are delighted")
Apple.com reveals iLife upgrade, reaffirms MacBook Air refresh ..
A little bit of URL manipulation has revealed separate forums for a new iMovie '11, iPhoto '11, and GarageBand '11, all three of which are core components of the iLife suite, leading us to go ahead and presume that Steve Jobs will be discussing an iLife '11 later today.
Yes, the fact that Apple follow a "closed" business model gave us this environment, in which "fans" are forced to run after deep investigations in order to understand what's going to happen next. I understand that it's a part of Apple strategy, as a whole (and I am an Apple customers too).
Anyway I can't help but notice the difference with the Ubuntu roadmap.. in which you're not forced to run after unconfirmed rumors, but you find all under the Sun...
Thursday, 14 October 2010
GNOME 3 and KDE 4...
Interesting point of view about the developement of GNOME, in comparision with the fate of KDE4 ...
GNOME will emphasize simplicity, ease-of-use, and understated modernity over flashiness and over-the-top effects. KDE will be the way forward for ultimate customization, web-connected computing through Plasmoid widgets, and flashy desktop effects (as well as tools for power-users, like Dolphin/Konqueror vs. Nautilus, Okular vs. Evince, Kate vs. Gedit, etc.).Read more at dasublogbyprashanth.blogspot.com
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
obiect oriented... or not?
Admittedly, I have grown up with Basic and Fortran, but I still can't fully understand what it's written in every Java book I stumbled upon, i.e, the object oriented way of thinking should be more "natural"..
... mmmm, sure??
"Here is my simplified position, I find OOP harder to read, harder to maintain, and harder to use. PP seems so intuitive and straight forward. I find most PP code I can read and understand with very little in the way of comments or documentation, the code is the code you can see what it is doing (it is mostly self documenting). In OOP I find that I am constantly trying to figure out what it is doing, it seems more... nebulous. I normally have to jump around more; it is not like PP where you are mostly reading top down.
Read more at www.linuxjournal.com
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
KDE 4.5 is here...
Admittedly, I am a Gnome / Mac OS X person from a good amount of time. Nevertheless, when I look at these screenshot, I am taken by a strange desire, namely, to test KDE again... ;-)
KDE, an international Free Software community, is happy to announce the immediate availability of the KDE Applications 4.5. Be it the high-quality games, educational and productivity software or the useful tools, these applications have become more powerful, yet easier to use.
See more at kde.org
Friday, 30 July 2010
Why Android? Because it's open!
"We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That's why we created Android, and made its source code open."
Welcome to Android
Read more at source.android.com
Linux Mint 9 KDE
Read more at www.h-online.com
"The Linux Mint development team have issued the KDE Edition of version 9 of their Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, code named "Isadora". Linux Mint aims to be user friendly and to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including support for DVD playback, Java, and various plug-ins and media codecs..."
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Really high mass star ...
I really prefer low mass stars.. in which they can shine for a much longer time! (Image credits: ESO)
A 300 Solar Mass Star Uncovered
Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The existence of these monsters — millions of times more luminous than the Sun, losing weight through very powerful winds — may provide an answer to the question “how massive can stars be?”
Read more at www.eso.org
Sunday, 18 July 2010
GrandPerspective
GrandPerspective is a small utility application for Mac OS X that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system. It can help you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which files and folders take up the most space. It uses a so called tree map for visualisation. Each file is shown as a rectangle with an area proportional to the file's size. Files in the same folder appear together, but their placement is otherwise arbitrary.Read more at grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Tips for bloggers
Brief but interesting article for those who blogs but have to deal with many activities... sometimes, it's good to return to the core: blogging is about writing (possibly good) blog posts, first of all. Simply like that ! ;)
4 Tips To Help You Stay Focused on Your Blog
Most people who blog also have a full time job or occupation (i.e., school), not to mention other personal activities (e.g., friends and family), so balancing everything can become tricky indeed.
If you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to your blog, focus on the core activities only. The main one is writing content. If you only have time for one task, use it to write content. If in one day you happen to have some extra time, use it to promote your best posts.
Read more at www.dailyblogtips.com
Friday, 16 July 2010
What I like in Amplify
Here is my first thought...
- the possibility of web site clipping & posting is great. Better than Buzz or Friendfeed
- I like the "recommend" button. Easy and fast way to show appreciation of a post
- I like the threaded replies (much better than "flat" replies as in FriendFeed or Qaiku). Identi.ca has also threaded replies but the strong limit in the length can heavily hamper the conversations
- I like the fact that blog & microblog are kept together, the user can choose the right format for each post
- I also appreciate than micropost are not limited to the too much abused 140 chars max. 500 is far better, IMHO; I'm tired of very short post ;)
- Connection to other services is also a good thing. Just hope Amplify staff can add Identi.ca in a near future ...
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Why I'm using gmail #0
I was somewhat pushed into this, from personal "ruminations" after a diffused dibate that took place in my Observatory in several occasion, where my position (with an interestingly wide spread of different approaches) is now shared among a good number of other researchers.

These posts came as an (imperfect) traslation of a series of little messages I am writing in italian in another blog. Instead of making a long post here (with a long series of grammatical errors... since English is not my first language!) I have choosen a different approach, i.e., to breack up the list of reason in a series of little "pills" to be hosted (also) on my compainion blog signal2noise (s2n). This also with the aim to explore a little bit a form of expression expecially suitable for Posterous platform (yes, I'm addicted to web techology and services, no doubt!)
Well, at this point, I'd say that the scenario is well defined. Next post will deal with a first "motivation" for my adoption of Gmail. In passing, if you like the idea and want to add your two cents, just drop a message to s2n@posterous.com :-)

Saturday, 12 June 2010
Stellarium, the sky inside your computer
... Briefly, there are so many interesting features that even those vaguely fond of astronomy can be convinced to try it!
Version 0.10.3 has been released on 29 of January, with new features like plugins that allow to predict the position of artificial satellites, and a database with constellation for twelve different cultures.. and many other thinks that you'll be glad to discover by yourself ;)
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Flash for iPhones / iPods?
http://www.infoworld.com/print/122878
Saturday, 15 May 2010
Ubuntu 10.04, my two cents...
- for a "sick" of social networks like myself, Ubuntu 10.04 comes with a really interesting aspect: it is eminently social. It comes with the client gwibber (now at release 2.30.0.1) that supports Twitter, StatusNet, Facebook, Identi.ca, Digg, FriendFeed, and also Qaiku (a microblog service with an exciting support for languages; I like it a lot and, as a matter of fact, I have realized most of the interface translation in Italian). To tell the truth, not only it's included, but it result deeply integrated in the "social" concept of Ubuntu, for which we can now express our "online presence" directly from the top status bar of Gnome. I am very curious (and so are the developers) to understand whether the inclusion of native Qaiku in Ubuntu will bring more users to put their noses in this interesting but still little known platform.
- There was much discussion on Ubuntu related sites, concerning the new network online music store that comes integrated into Rhytmbox, the "software and music playback for GNOME", which is now reached its version 0.12.8 (but what to say about this habit of going forward with the zero point something ?). I just spent a bit of time in it, and I found that the prices of a number of albums are very interesting and - at least in some cases - significantly lower than their iTunes counterparts .
- The GNOME desktop backgrounds have my appreciation, for the aesthetic work that I think has given excellent results. Overall, it seems quite clear that Mac OS X has been well taken into account by the Ubuntu developers (up to small details as the discussed choice of putting the icons on the left side of windows) ... but that's OK, no problem;)
- Even the 'Ubuntu Software Center' (again, the not-too-hidden reference not is to the online software repository of Mac OS X) has made significant progress. Browsing through categories to choose the software to install it 's now easier, and it is a truly enjoyable experience ... and it's free, too!
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Twitter Blog: Hello World
We hope you'll share in our enthusiasm as today we unveil a simple service we're calling Promoted Tweets. It's non-traditional, it's easy, and it makes a ton of sense for Twitter.
Twitter makes its first moves toward advertising. Personally, I do appreciate the honesty and transparency that comes out from the blog post. Anyway, I wonder what will be the response of the community...
Friday, 2 April 2010
googliferus
- an investment,
- some assets,
- products to sell, and
- customers to sell them to.
- Their protocols and their applications are not their products, those are their investments.
- We are not their customers. We are their assets.
- Data-mining, eyeball time, internet syndication: those are their products, the ones that they sell to increase their stellar share value and their business. Data-mining in particular is one of the most sought and profitable products to sell.
- their applications are the products, the one that they sell, and
- we are their customers (in the specific case of MS office business model, of course)
Friday, 19 March 2010
Amarok "Clear Light" released
That said, it also worth to say that it is still a complete and rather powerful software: certainly for KDE users it represents a great and rewarding choice, that can contribute greatly in making the desktop environment more comfortable, also in terms of management of a user's collection of audio files (as well as Internet radio and podcasts, which in passing is a recently reinforced section)
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Lucid moves to Yahoo! as Firefox search provider
![]() | |||
If you open Firefox in a brand new Ubuntu 9.04, here is what you get... |
To switch to the page of the next Ubuntu, you simply have to change the following URL:
http://start.ubuntu.com/9.10/
to this easily guessed URL:
http://start.ubuntu.com/10.04/
and you'll be greeted with the following webpage:
![]() |
Next Ubuntu default Firefox page... |
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Book Of Love, Peter Gabriel
Well, I came to the conclusion that it's time to add some bytes of music to patch.panel. After all, music is something that can easily run - in its digital form - trough wires, panels and similar stuff... ;)
A friend of mine shared this wonderful song, a cover beautifully played by Peter Gabriel. I find that both music and worlds are wonderful: this video present a static image, so you can better concentrate on the worlds.
..."you ought to give me wedding rings..."
Friday, 12 March 2010
Happy birthday, Qaiku!
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Qaiku, work in progress...

If Qaiku was famous like Twitter, now the whole web would be talking
about the maintenance status of the service ;)
Anyway, let's hope that after the upgrade we, as Qaiku users, can
benefit from some new feature!
Thursday, 4 March 2010
New Brand for Ubuntu?

via wiki.ubuntu.com
No more brown in Ubuntu desktop? Anyway, I must recognize that the posted screenshots are pretty.... It seems that Ubuntu is succesfully shaping a path toward a "clear" and fresh new style.
The new layout let you understand that there is something "new", without loosing completely the old and widely accepted look & feel. Well done Ubuntu!
Thursday, 25 February 2010
MeMenu on Ubuntu

Just stumbled upon the page explaining the "MeMenu" concept, to be fully implemented in upcoming releases of Ubuntu. I like very much the Rationale under this project. With the other news, such as the music store that's just opening, it seems more and more difficult not to love Ubuntu, in my humble opinion ! ;-)
Thursday, 18 February 2010
5 New Things about Windows 8 and Ubuntu 10.04

Interesting comparison between the expected features of the upcoming operating releases from Microsoft and Ubuntu.
Broadly speaking, it seems hard to deny that linux on desktop is getting more and more appealing with time... Problems remains in the lack of certain "key applications" (as iTunes, or Photoshop); its avaibility could drive many user to linux, IMHO...
Friday, 12 February 2010
Why Google Buzz will be a hit - CNN.com
Two forces are at work here, then: the immediate utility of a social service pre-populated with people you know, combined with the habitual behaviors associated with checking your email throughout the day.
Interesting article on the recently released Google Buzz, the social network built from Google in a close connection with its popular Gmail service. The main advantages and limits of the new services are correctly explained, IMHO.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Dustin Kirkland: 35,000-Core Ubuntu Server Farm Renders Avatar
They have a 2 Petabyte disk array, 10gbps networking, and 35,000 cores (4,000+ HP blades) in their data center, and still it takes 48 hours to render some of their graphic sequences.According to Paul, Ubuntu is at the core of all of this,
Ok, I still have to see the film. Anyway, I think that it's fairly impressive just reading about the computational power that nowadays it's needed to produce a film like Avatar! Additionally, I must admit that my "open source" side is pleased to know that they are using Ubuntu on their machines... ;)