Well after this week I have been looking hard at where all of my knowledge is going in the world. I find it that there are some major issues with new micro-blogging social networks. In this article I am going to point out the good and the bad from all of the major services I am currently using.
People want to get away from twitter because it has this little issue call users using it really heavily. The system then gets over loaded and breaks, the scale whale fills the twitter web page and all of the errors appear. Complaining people start bad mouthing twitter and start looking for the next best thing.
I started out my micro-blogging with jaiku, www.jaiku.com. There didn't seem to be many friends there and I was having problems finding people that I knew. This is one of the big issues with being an early adopter. Jaiku is nice in the way it sets up the conversitions that people have. They are placed into a thread so you don't have to search through many other messages to follow the conversation. The mobile version looks like the web version with little differences. Jaiku also has a few programmers that have made apps to allow you to post and recieve messages from Jaiku. These apps are a little harder to find now that Google has bought Jaiku and taken it under its wings.
My second micro-bloggin adventure was then twitter. Twitter for me also started out slowly and I found not many of my friends were using twitter. It took almost a year for my friends to start using twitter. I found twitter was not useful until about 20 people were following me. That is 20 real people not to be confused by the robotic auto adding people that exist on twitter. The development community and support community is really backing twitter. In the last month even when I complain about something not working twitter users suprise me by pointing my to things that fix my problems. Most of the people I am following are now these apps that are question answering or support groups. They have make links into the twittervers and when someone knows the answer to your issue your fix is twittered to you. This has not happened on any of the other services I am currently using.
The rest of my micro-blogging areas are plurk, brightkite, ping.fm, and the newest kid on the block Identi.ca. For me plurk and brightkite both have some cool features that make them nice. Plurk gives you a Karma rating that lets you know how social you are. This Karma rating can be picky if you don't post to plurk for a day or so, which can bring down your ratings.
Brightkite integrates with google maps showing you where all of your friends are and what is going on in your area. I once again live in an area where there are little to no brightkite users so I can't find anyone to meetup with. Even when looking for people to just run into when at Hershey Park. I guess geeks don't get out and have fun much.
Ping.fm lets you post to most of your blog and micro-blog sights, update your status on your social networking sights. I have found this a wonderful tool.
Identi.ca the new kid on the block labeled a Twitter Clone, does 90% of what twitter already does. Nothing new there. I think it even got the breaking part down, the first day I tried it the support email didn't work, and I could signup for the service, but I could not login and make changes to my account settings. The major push for the Identi.ca service is that it is Open Source. I don't find this a big deal to jump on this service. All services have APIs that you can create apps for and you are not tied into having to go to that services website. If the openness of this service makes it a more distrubtied service so the service becomes more reliable, but time will only tell.
Hope to twitter, jaiku, plurk, bkite, Identica, or ping you all soon.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Fedora 9 on USB
Well I had a 4GB USB drive laying around so I figured that it would be good to test this new live feature on the Fedora Project. The only thing that I found really interesting is that the ability to setup this USB key had a Windows Application to set the entire process. This makes it easy for Windows users to try the entire system with out having to re-partition their drives.
The first thing you need is to download the Fedora Live CD ISO file. This will be what gets installed on the USB key. The next thing you need is the Fedora Live USB Creator https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator. This program will create your Fedora install in the USB Key.
After finally going through all of the USB key setup I booted a computer to see if it would work. The computer worked except for the WiFi card. I knew this would be the case since the WiFi card is a Broadcom chipset. Then I put the key aside for another day, a day which I would have some time to play more.
There was only one limitation you can only setup a maxium for the file system space to use which is 2GB from the live usb creator. This gave me still 2GB for file space that I can share with other systems.
The day has come when I could play more. I connected the key to my main laptop which is a Dell Latitude D820. I pressed F12 to bring up the boot menu at the BIOS. Booted the and found that this computer even the WiFi card was found. Got to love that Intel WiFi cards have a native kernel driver. Even the WiFi led works which doesn't work on the latest Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Release.
Next I figured lets see what I can break. I setup my VPN connection so I could log into a WiFi connection where I happened to be located. Sure enough it worked right away. So now I wanted to do more. I had the system check for updates, I then downloaded and installed all of the updates for Fedora 9 since it was released.
Then I figured lest break something else. I when to Adobe Air and downloaded the Alpha for Linux install and installed it. This was a little tricky since you have to run the install as a basic user and durning the install it asks for the root password during the install. This worked so then I figured twhirl, check my last post. It seemed to have the same install issue as the Adobe Air install.
After that I played with this for a while and figured it was time to add this to my blog. There are a few things missing but for a live version of this linux distribution. No OpenOffice, no out of the box support for my nVidia video card 3D graphics. It does have Abiword and a basic spreadsheet.
After playing with the usb for a few hours I put it away for use when I need it later. All of this post has been produced in Fedora 9 on the USB Key. I hope you enjoy and sometime maybe you will be using a USB key to support working on other computers.
The first thing you need is to download the Fedora Live CD ISO file. This will be what gets installed on the USB key. The next thing you need is the Fedora Live USB Creator https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator. This program will create your Fedora install in the USB Key.
After finally going through all of the USB key setup I booted a computer to see if it would work. The computer worked except for the WiFi card. I knew this would be the case since the WiFi card is a Broadcom chipset. Then I put the key aside for another day, a day which I would have some time to play more.
There was only one limitation you can only setup a maxium for the file system space to use which is 2GB from the live usb creator. This gave me still 2GB for file space that I can share with other systems.
The day has come when I could play more. I connected the key to my main laptop which is a Dell Latitude D820. I pressed F12 to bring up the boot menu at the BIOS. Booted the and found that this computer even the WiFi card was found. Got to love that Intel WiFi cards have a native kernel driver. Even the WiFi led works which doesn't work on the latest Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Release.
Next I figured lets see what I can break. I setup my VPN connection so I could log into a WiFi connection where I happened to be located. Sure enough it worked right away. So now I wanted to do more. I had the system check for updates, I then downloaded and installed all of the updates for Fedora 9 since it was released.
Then I figured lest break something else. I when to Adobe Air and downloaded the Alpha for Linux install and installed it. This was a little tricky since you have to run the install as a basic user and durning the install it asks for the root password during the install. This worked so then I figured twhirl, check my last post. It seemed to have the same install issue as the Adobe Air install.
After that I played with this for a while and figured it was time to add this to my blog. There are a few things missing but for a live version of this linux distribution. No OpenOffice, no out of the box support for my nVidia video card 3D graphics. It does have Abiword and a basic spreadsheet.
After playing with the usb for a few hours I put it away for use when I need it later. All of this post has been produced in Fedora 9 on the USB Key. I hope you enjoy and sometime maybe you will be using a USB key to support working on other computers.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Review twhirl vs spaz
After playing with both Spaz and twhirl I finally have a final vote for which one I will be using on my computers. After all was said and done I hope you find the same results as me. Both seem to have issues in the Linux environment, and here is what I found testing them on Windows and Linux using Ubuntu 8.04 distrubtion. Both are Adobe AIR software which is Adobe's cross platform software development tool. The software will install the same on any operating system that is supported by Adobe AIR.
Spaz can be downloaded and installed from http://funkatron.com/spaz
Spaz I noticed that when you start it for the first time you have to enter your username and password for twitter, but the user name and password boxes appear over all of the settings options. I wasn't sure I was entering the username and password in the correct location. It worked and has some very cool sounds to it, kind of making me think of the old NBC tones that used to play inbetween the tv shows. I got totally spazzed that this program worked better than any of the other clients that were native to linux. The only draw back is every time I restart my computer I had to re-enter my username and password.
Then there is twhirl. My entire body was went into twitter overload. It allows you to cross post to other applications, search through the twitter database to see what others have tweeted about in the past. Say you need to know about a program. You want to see if people like the program. You can search for that program name. Sure enough tweets appear with that program name or what ever you search in for.
Twhirl also allows you to add other twitter accounts god for bid you have more than one twitter account and want to post to more and more accounts at one time. Also you can view and post to your friendfeed account. I guess you can also add multiple friendfeed accounts just like twitter and keep track of many of them.
twhirl can be download at http://www.twhirl.org
After playing with both of them for a week I have totally fallen in love with twhirl it has more features that I like.
Spaz can be downloaded and installed from http://funkatron.com/spaz
Spaz I noticed that when you start it for the first time you have to enter your username and password for twitter, but the user name and password boxes appear over all of the settings options. I wasn't sure I was entering the username and password in the correct location. It worked and has some very cool sounds to it, kind of making me think of the old NBC tones that used to play inbetween the tv shows. I got totally spazzed that this program worked better than any of the other clients that were native to linux. The only draw back is every time I restart my computer I had to re-enter my username and password.
Then there is twhirl. My entire body was went into twitter overload. It allows you to cross post to other applications, search through the twitter database to see what others have tweeted about in the past. Say you need to know about a program. You want to see if people like the program. You can search for that program name. Sure enough tweets appear with that program name or what ever you search in for.
Twhirl also allows you to add other twitter accounts god for bid you have more than one twitter account and want to post to more and more accounts at one time. Also you can view and post to your friendfeed account. I guess you can also add multiple friendfeed accounts just like twitter and keep track of many of them.
twhirl can be download at http://www.twhirl.org
After playing with both of them for a week I have totally fallen in love with twhirl it has more features that I like.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Microsoft Live Mesh
This is a cool new option from microsoft. You can remote any one of your Windows computers that is on the Mesh and you can share files from each of the computers. You have a Live Desktop when can be opened from any (even firefox in linux) web browser that will allow you to download your files and work on them. When you upload your files back to the Mesh the new file is synced to any computer that is part of your Live Mesh. This makes for easy of keeping all of your files up to date and working smothly. Here are a few screen shots of the Live Desktop on my Ubuntu computer with files I was playing around with. Click on the images above to see in better detail what the desktop looks like.
Iighting and USB talk from College Friends in the Wild Podcast
USB Hard drive enclosure issues Jarrett caused when he thought the yellow ribbon cable on the picture above was removable. Now no IDE works on that enclosure.
This is a TV or Radio Tower being hit by lightning in Harrisburg PA. A very cool image we talked about on our podcast at www.cfitw.com Finally getting some time to update all of the sites I work on and updating here.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Apple Update
Well I am not thrilled with the new MacBook Air. This new ultra portable doesn't seem to fit into what I was looking for in a replacement computer. I was hopping that the options would be better. It does have a very nice cool factor but that is about it. Apple should have put a bigger hard drive in it and given the option to upgrade RAM. I think this will just limit the ultra portable.
Today I logged into Facebook and found a new feature called expanded profile. This allows you to hide the apps in your profile that you do not use often and are low on your profile page. This is a cool feature for my page since it was starting to become a monster of a page with all of the apps I have installed.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Fedora 8
I know I am behind the times, but finally got my first test system updated to Fedora 8. More information to be announced as I dig deeper into this version. See how it compairs to Ubuntu 7.10 and other Linux Distro's I use.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
IT Business podcasting idea
Taking in all my thoughts I think the missing podcast my be linking where business and IT meet so that business planners can see where IT is coming from. More thoughts on this later.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
$18 per month.
Just imagine how much you can do if 1.4 million users gave you $18 per month. Must be good to be apple.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
500GB Hard Drive
I never thought I would see the day that you could pickup a 500GB hard drive for under $200. So I bought one to make a backup of my system which really needed it.
I joined Second Life today also, I guess I will figure out what all of the big deal is with this new way to communicate with people. Friends will be receiving invites once I figure it all out.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Ubuntu updates
Backports updates
hal-device-manager
libhal-storage1
libhal1
hal
Version 0.5.9-1ubuntu2~feisty1:
* Automated backport upload; no source changes.
Version 0.5.9-1ubuntu2:
* debian/rules: Only enable MacBooc on i386 and amd64, since only
works and builds there. Fixes FTBFS on sparc and powerpc.
Version 0.5.9-1ubuntu1:
* Merge with Debian experimental. Remaining Ubuntu changes:
** Ubuntu specific **
- debian/control:
+ Drop linux-kernel-headers dependency (called linux-libc-dev in Ubuntu
which is build-essential).
+ Add XS-Vcs-Bzr, remove Debian's XS-Vcs-Svn.
+ Ubuntu maintainer.
- Launchpad integration:
+ Add p-l-i dependency to hal-device-manager.
+ Add debian/patches/ubuntu-lpi.patch: h-d-m code bits.
- hwdb integration:
+ Add hwdb-client-gnome dependency to hal-device-manager and sharutils
build dependency.
+ Add icons: debian/{hal-cpu,hal-memory,hwdb}.png.uuencode.
+ debian/patches/34-add_hwdb_button.patch: Glade modifications and Python
code hook.
+ debian/rules: uudecode icons during build.
- Langpack support for .desktop file:
+ debian/hal-device-manager.desktop: Add gettext domain, improve comment.
+ Add debian/hal-device-manager.desktop.in: .desktop stub for intltool
POT creation.
+ debian/patches/ubuntu-desktop-POTFILES.patch: Add this desktop.in to
po/POTFILES.in.
+ debian/rules: Include gnome.mk to do the automagic POT building.
- Ubuntu udev world order:
+ Remove debian/hal.links.
+ debian/rules: Install udev rules into /etc/udev/rules.d/.
+ debian/hal.{preinst,postinst,postrm}: Transition code for changing the
udev rule priority (see 0.5.8.1-3ubuntu7, needs to be kept until next
LTS).
- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountAllLocalFilesystems spec:
+ debian/patches/56_probe_fstab.patch: Check whether a volume or storage
device is present in fstab, and if so, set linux.fstab.options and
linux.fstab.mountpoint.
+ debian/patches/24_ignored_volumes.patch: Ignore fixed partitions which
are supposed to be mounted automatically in fstab, but aren't.
- debian/patches/62_ignore_single_slash_label.patch: Ignore labels which
only consist of a slash, so that they do not end up as /media/-. An
earlier Ubuntu d-i/ubiquity created those labels by default.
(LP #83323)
** Packaging fixes which should go to Debian **
- Privilege reduction:
+ debian/hal.postinst: Add haldaemon to various groups for removable
device access (floppy, plugdev, etc.).
+ debian/patches/25_privileges-addons.patch: Run addon-storage as
non-root.
- debian/hal.init.dbus: Use actual init script path in usage help, not
hardcoded /etc/init.d/hal (since it is actually in /etc/dbus/event.d).
(LP #84642)
- debian/hal.postrm: Check mode ($1) properly.
- debian/patches/02_powerscripts.patch: Prefer alternative scripts over
pmi, since pmi is the default.
- debian/run-hald.sh: Put absolute paths in HALD_RUNNER_PATH so that
callouts are found, too.
- debian/patches/55_nonpolkit-mount-policy.patch: Implement a policy check
if PolicyKit is not available: Only allow mounting of removable devices
to non-root users.
- debian/patches/62_dbus-python-0.80.patch: Correctly show HAL properties
in hal-device-manager with dbus-python. (FD #9343; rejected upstream
because h-d-m is going away).
** Bug fixes which should go upstream **
- debian/patches/16_ntfs_allowed_mount_options.patch: Allow NTFS mount
option 'utf8' (LP #78142).
- debian/patches/24_ignored_volumes.patch: Ignore fixed partitions but
those mounted to /media.
- debian/patches/59_add_ssb_bus.patch: Add support for devices on the SSB
bus; patch by Matthew Garrett.
- debian/patches/63_fixup_macbookpro.patch: Extend 10-macbookpro-utils.fdi
fixes to more MacBooc models; patch by Matthew Garret.
** Bug fixes from upstream bugzilla **
- debian/patches/65-keyboard-addon-repeated.patch: Do not ignore key
repeat events in the keyboard addon. (FD #9767)
- debian/patches/66-NULL-fstype-crash.patch: Do not crash on NULL
volume.fstypes, and assing some fallback values to them. (FD #10429,
LP #87800)
- debian/patches/67-fix-probe-volume.patch: Fix scrambled labels.
(FD #10362, LP #69914)
Changes in this version:
* Remove debian/10-storage-policy.fdi to stop ejecting all USB/Firewire
devices. (LP: #63090)
* Remove debian/patches/57_allow_bus_virtual.patch: This does not apply at
all to 0.5.9, and must either be confirmed to be obsolete or redone.
* Disable debian/patches/34-add_hwdb_button.patch for now, it needs to be
reworked for 0.5.9.
Version 0.5.9-1:
* New upstream release.
* Patches removed as they were applied or fixed upstream:
- debian/patches/03_macbookpro_configure.patch
- debian/patches/04_cd_write.patch
- debian/patches/05_one_formfactor_fallback.patch
- debian/patches/06_smbios_return.patch
- debian/patches/07_ppc_suspend.patch
- debian/patches/08_openfirmware.patch
- debian/patches/09_check_hashtable_initialisation.patch
- debian/patches/10_callout_errors.patch
- debian/patches/11_no_useless_runner_errors.patch
- debian/patches/12_pegasus_pmu_crash_fix.patch
- debian/patches/13_hal_callout_bashism.patch
- debian/patches/15_partition_probing.patch
- debian/patches/24_dbus_connection_close.patch
- debian/patches/25_correctly_free_lists.patch
- debian/patches/26_fix_hald_not_running_coredump.patch
- debian/patches/27_hal_fix_dbus_error_is_set.patch
- debian/patches/29_handle_non_hal_mounts.patch
- debian/patches/30_cdrom_bogus_tocinfo.patch
* Revised patches:
- debian/patches/02_powerscripts.patch
* debian/patches/19_sonypi_support.patch
- Removed. Instead of relying on the external spicctrl tool, /dev/sonypi
is used directly now by the hal-system-sonypic addon.
* debian/patches/55_nonpolkit-mount-policy.patch
- Removed. We depend on PolicyKit now to check if a user is authorized to
mount local partitions.
* debian/control
- Add Depends: hal-info (>= 20070402) to hal package.
* debian/libhal(-storage)-dev.install
- Do not install libtool *.la files anymore.
* debian/rules
- Remove cdbs tarball.mk rules file.
- Cleanup obsolete rm commands from common-install-impl.
* debian/hal.dirs
- Create the directories /var/cache/hald (fdi files cache) and
/var/lib/hal (dev acl management list).
* debian/hald.8, debian/lshal.1
- Removed. Shipped upstream.
* debian/hal.manpages
- Install upstream manpages. (Closes: #277399)
Version 0.5.8.1-9:
* debian/no-cd-media-check.fdi
- Re-added "HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GCA-4080N" product string
Version 0.5.8.1-8:
[ Michael Biebl ]
* debian/control:
- Add an explicit build dependency on docbook-xml so we don't fail on
buildds without network access.
[ Sjoerd Simons ]
* debian/hal-unmount.sh: Always run pumount/umount if a block device is
removed, not only when it's mounted. This ensure that dm devices can be
properly deconfigured by pumount.
* debian/debian-storage-policy-ignore-fixed-crypto-drives.fdi
- Added. Ignore non-removable devices with crypto volumes again
(Closes: #414417)
Version 0.5.8.1-7:
[ Sjoerd Simons ]
* Acknowledge Steve Langasek's NMU. (Closes: #370186)
* debian/patches/29_handle_non_hal_mounts.patch
- Added. Handle volume removal for mounted volumed that weren't mounted by
hal correctly.
* debian/patches/30_cdrom_bogus_tocinfo.patch
- Added. Some cdrom drives/discs report a wrong start of the session in the
TOC, causing hal to not detect the filesystem. Work around this by
rescanning at offset 0 for discs when filesystem detection fails.
[ Michael Biebl ]
* Add XS-Vcs-* fields to debian/control.
* Drop debian-storage-policy-fixed-drives.fdi in favor of
debian/patches/55_nonpolkit-mount-policy.patch.
This fixes the problem that local devices are not shown in nautilus.
(Closes: #394155, #395169, #409879)
* debian/patches/02_powerscripts.patch
- Add support for pm-utils and prefer it over other solutions. This is in
anticipation of hal-0.5.9, where pm-utils will be the preferred backend.
* Install HAL specification document. (Closes: #413813)
- debian/control: Build-Depend on docbook-utils and libxml2-utils.
- debian/rules: Pass --enable-docbook-docs to ./configure.
* debian/watch
- Fix regexp to not match non-hal releases, like hal-info.
Version 0.5.8.1-6.1:
* Non-maintainer upload.
* High-urgency upload for RC bugfix.
* Provide /usr/share/doc/hal/examples/no-cd-media-check.fdi as an example
for disabling CD ROM media checks, and document this in README.Debian, as
a workaround for CD drives with broken firmware. Closes: #370186.
Version 0.5.8.1-6:
* debian/patches/19_sonypi_support.patch
- Added. Fixes the sonypi brightness setting method
(Patch from Mike Hommey) (Closes: #391528)
Version 0.5.8.1-5:
[ Michael Biebl ]
* debian/hal-doc.install, debian/hal-doc.links
- Install API documentation into /usr/share/doc/hal-doc/html and create a
link back to /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/hal so devhelp can find it.
(Closes: #398803)
* debian/control
- Add a Suggests on devhelp for the hal-doc package which allows to
access the API documentation more easily.
[ Sebastian Dröge ]
* debian/control:
+ Updated to use my debian.org mail address
[ Sjoerd Simons ]
* debian/patches/28_runner_64bit_values.patch
- Added. Ensure 64 bit values are correctly aligned before passing them to
dbus (Closes: #404937)
* Urgency high, fixes an RC bug
Friday, May 11, 2007
Demo's
XBox 360 demo downloads, Forenza Motor Sport 2 and C&C3 I think I picked another one I guess I will see them in the morning when I wake up. Reviews to come. I played C&C 3 and love it very much for the little bit of time I played it.
Leo is going to get me in trouble with all of the new Tech stuff I can play with. http://terryjr386.tumblr.com and http://terryjr386.jaiku.com are some of the things I am playing with now. Soon I won't have to surf the internet I will have everything I need at my fingertips. This blog post will appear in tumblr via a rss feed what a cool way to keep track of everything.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Mandriva Spring 2007
A new day a new Linux distro to download. Started the Bit Torrent for this download maybe tomorrow I will get to play with the new version and see what they have added and changed to make it better.
Tumblr
Tumblelogs, since blogs aren't quick enough someone comes up with a faster way to get information you look at faster. I am now also on http://terryjr386.tumblr.com Anything I put here will also get put there automatically. Also you can now add your rss feeds to this service and all your new can be at one place. The Internet is always changing and getting better.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Patch Tuesday Vista hit again
Well so much for a more secure version of Windows. Microsoft released about 18 new security updates today and sure enough Vista was also hit. If you were running MS Office 2007 you are also hit with security updates. Time to update your Windows systems and reboot again, and again, and again. Even my little test system which does nothing but boot windows needed 5 updates, and a reboot.
Microsoft wasn't the only OS hit with updates this week, my Fedora Core 6 also had 11 updates 5 that I could count were security updates. You have got to love Linux, I did the updates on this system and there was no reboot required this time. The only time my system needs a reboot is if I update a kernel module, dsub, and hal module.
I added more changes to my website making it easy to download my random desktop wallpaper script for my Linux computers. If I ever met the person I found this script from I would kiss them. A little bit of sad news is that I saw that there is a program for windows that does this now. I will update everyone more on this as I get time to test how it works compared to the script I use.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Fedora Core 7 T4 update.
Something new I missed on the new version of Fedore Core 7 is Fedora now has a graphical trouble shooter for SELinux issues. A little Star appears in the applet panel. This allows you to see what was run and what the error was. This will help users figure out why their program was stopped from running. Added security is always a good thing.
A few more updates came in since the last update but since they are still in a Test version I won't be listing them for you. Pigin 2.0.0-0.36 beta7 is the latest version running on the new Fedora giving the final good bye to the old pictures and icons on GAIM. It looks like they could keep all of the old features of this wonderful IM client. I haven't found anything missing yet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
