Nominate Mac4Lin, and Gmail stupidity

One of the pleasant surprises I’ve seen while perusing our stats is the amount of traffic we’ve gotten from people looking for info on the Mac4Lin Transformation Kit. (Yes, we’re still in Release candidate status for version 1.0, but we’re hoping we can get it out before summer ends.) The good people at SourceForge are taking nominations for the 2009 Community Choice Awards. Please help us by nominating the Mac4Lin for Best Visual Design.

Mac4Lin

Did Google’s servers suffer a concussion?

Now for the not so great news. As the tech news media is reporting, yesterday Google had a network glitch that made many parts of their sites unavailable for about an hour. But as many Gmail users will tell you, they’ve been having a pretty major issue with showing images for a couple weeks now. The problem is that when Gmail shows you an image that includes images they ask you if you want to see them, but their servers have suffered amnesia as to whether you have said to always show the images or not. It’s getting to the point that I’m having to say “always show the damned images from this sender” on a daily basis for many of the same senders, and some users are reporting that they’re doing it multiple times in a single day. Just today I had to tell Google that I always want to see the images from a good 90% of the senders that I have email subscriptions with for news, shopping info (such as sale flyers) and entertainment (such as ICHC and Comics.com). Sarah, one fo Google’s employees, said that the devs are aware of the issue and are working on it, but she posted that on 30 April and we don’t seem to be any closer to a resolution than we were when she posted the response and their blog has been strangely silent on the matter. Unfortunately it’s making some of us question whether we were smart when we elected to rely on Google for many of their services, such as email, online documents and site search.

So if you’re thinking about signing up with Google for something, you may want to hold off on it or go with someone else until they get their act together better.

Peng’s links for Tuesday, 25 November

• Launchpad News: Launchpad 2.1.11: OpenID support and now easier to contact other people. I love it when a software updates provide an extra goodie. If you were trying to find a good OpenID source (my blog isn’t so great since I share it with Nanci and I keep getting ID’d as my little sister) and you have a membership on Launchpad you may have found a great resource. Too bad I was at one site that didn’t accept the ID, but I’m not sure if that’s a Launchpad issue or an issue with the other site.
• Anirudh Acharya: Mac4Lin featured in Linux Magazine. Mac4Lin 1.0 is working toward a second release candidate but that’s not keeping the folks at Linux Magazine from giving it a nice article in the January issue. Ani’s got a PDF of the article you can download, as well as an updated pack with the new versions of the GTK scripts and a new uninstall script that one of our users was kind enough to contribute.
• Scott Ritchie: Redesigning WineHQ.org. The WINE team is working on a redesign of their website and is asking for feedback on the new design.
• E-LINUX.it: No more Microsoft Internet Explorer for the 2010 soccer world cup. When I first saw the headline on Google News I thought it would be a report of Microsoft loosing a contract, but it’s actually a great look at the hazards of doing web design to fit a single browser. I especially love this statement: “Must work on all browsers – If you don’t you get to lose 1/3 of your audience.” That goes for designing for any browser, whether it’s IE, Opera or Firefox. You should always design to standards, not to a browser. And don’t worry, the article is in English so you won’t have to worry about finding your Babel fish.
• Ceci Connolly/Washington Post: Doctors Are Slow to Start Writing Prescriptions Online. My doctor’s started sending my prescriptions straight to my pharmacy, which is really nice. No longer will have have to drop off my script, then go do some shopping to kill enough time until my new meds are ready.
• The Media Equation/NYTimes.com: Google Seduces With Utility. David Carr admits to using a ton of Google services, and he’s getting a little worried about it.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 9 October

You’d think that with the Dodgers sweeping the Phillies Cubbies so early that I’d have more time to do blog posts. I’m still not sure where the last three days have gone, but I do have a few links for you.

• DesktopLinux.com: Google rev’s photo editor for Linux. Google’s Picasa, their image editing and sharing program, has gotten even better with the beta release of version 3.0. Not only is there better integration with web albums, a new collage tool, and an auto-red-eye removal, but one of the best things is the speed of loading. It used to be a case of click the launcher and go get a cup of coffee while it loads, but when I first launched Picasa after getting it upgrade it quickly showed the splash screen and asked about migrating my old settings. While there is a repository for Linux users to help you get updated more quickly you’ll want to add their test repo to get Picasa 3’s beta.
• Julian Saraceni: Appnr, searching and finding Ubuntu apps. I don’t usually post things I see on the Ubuntu Weblogs, simply to limit how many duplicate postings they get, but Julian has a great way to find packages without remembering what the heck they’re called. It doesn’t require a sign-up or installing software no included in Ubuntu’s repos to use Appnr, either.
• David Tutcher: Veza – An Opensource TinyURL Replacement (Aplha One). I love TinyURL, especially how easy it is to get a URI that doesn’t telegraph what the link goes to, but it’s not exactly open source. But there’s a new way coming down the pike that is 100% open source. Veza turns long URIs into not just short URIs but ones that are pretty easy to remember. I look forward to when there’s a bookmarklet that grabs the long URI and starts the process like there is for TinyURL, but that’s just a matter of time. (Yes, that post is kind of old, but I wanted to check it out more before I blogged it, and then I forgot to change the flag on it in Evolution so it would come up in my list of things to blog. Sorry ’bout that.)

I have news of an update to a favored program, but there’s a slight glitch in one file. The bug was reported and resolved, but until it makes the PPA archive so we can easily grab it I’m going to make you wait to see which app it is. Trust me, it will be worth the wait.

In the meantime, I trust at least some of you will be catching game one of the NLCS tonight. I plan on obeying a wallpaper I made for at least the next week or so.

Peng’s links for Friday, 26 September

• Alan Pope: Minor Annoyance of The Day. I have to admit I’d said something very similar a time or two (text zooming in Firefox 3 got this type of response from me), but Alan gives a bug fixer’s perspective to the old “if this bug isn’t fixed I’m changing apps” threat. Unfortunately some bugs (like Firefox’s text zoom) change basic functionality to the point where the program is no longer a good fit for the user. Yes, sometimes it’s an unfortunate realization rather than a churlish threat, but Alan still puts a good, short look at the matter.
• DesktopLinux.com: Linux Foundation courts individual members. After looking mostly for developers to join, the LF is letting individual users join for a mere $50, and you get not only the quarterly newsletter and other perks, you also get a tee to show that you love, and support, the penguin. A great deal at any price, at no matter what value for the USD.
• Oliver Grawert: Announcing the first ubuntu-mobile image. Do you own one of those snazzy little netbooks? If so you can snag a daily build of Ubuntu Intrepid to check out on it. Of course Ubuntu Intrepid is still in alpha stage and shouldn’t be used on any device that is used on a regular, if not daily, basis just yet. That said, I wish I had a device that could run it.
• Frank Taylor/Google Earth Blog: Top 10 Games With Google Earth. You’ve probably played FlightSim in Google Earth, but did you know you can play D&D in GE, as well as (American rules) football?  And you thought Google Earth was just for being productive and looking things up. I may have to fire up GE for a round or two of Mars Sucks.
• Mackenzie Morgan: Swfdec 0.8: Open Source Flash. Even the latest testing versions of Flash 10 don’t work completely right in Linux (and not just because they’re testing versions, either), and if you’re running a 64bit build of Linux it’s even worse. Mackenzie has an open source alternative that comes in a 64-bit version that I may have to check out (although I’d use the 32bit build). There’s even builds in a PPA for Hardy and Intrepid so you won’t have to build it to check it out on Ubuntu. Swfdec even prevents Flash video from starting automatically, making it as if you had FlashBlock installed.
• Nicolas Deschildre: Introducing the Ubuntu Wanted project. Do you need some specific help with a project? Or are you someone that wants to help out with Ubuntu but don’t know where to start? Sense Hofstede and the Ubuntu Wanted project may be just what you’re looking for.
• LinuxDevices.com: GNOME Mobile hits the road. When GNOME 2.24 came out earlier this week they included a mobile version of their desktop environment, and LinuxDevices is happy to get away from their desk and check out the new kid in the mobile computing town.

Peng’s links for Fried-day, 5 September

• Planet Mozilla: 10 Reasons Firefox won’t be worried about Chrome. A great post for Firefox fans who wonder what Chrome means to our favorite red panda.
• Matthieu Trudel: An education issue? + Yay for the Intrepid user switcher and shutdown/logoff window. One of the biggest hurdles FOSS (Free and Open Source) software has to overcome is that many people simply don’t realize there’s alternatives to proprietary, closed-source, commercial software. Matt also has a link to a great program for getting Ubuntu Linux used in public libraries. Not sure what he means by the the Intrepid user switcher since I couldn’t find anything about it in his post.
• Henrik Gemal: Firefox can become Google Chrome. Actually what he means is that Firefox already has most of Chrome’s cool feature set thanks to add-ons, but he does have a link to an article for what extensions you may need.
• Miia Ranta: I love (easter) eggs! Who doesn’t?
  /me debates installing nethack-gnome…

I have one more link to share, but I think you’ll agree with me that it deserves a post of it’s own.

[UPDATE] A quick update on Google Chrome

[Added link to WINE page for Chrome. - Peng]

Is it Fried-day already? I have some links I want to post but first I want to pass along an update on my comments about Google Chrome from Wednesday. It turned out the Google devs heard our complaints about the EULA loud and clear, and Google’s Matt Cutts contacted the suits and had some good news for us, although I didn’t see this until it came in an email update from the Ubuntu Forums.

I knew that Google didn’t want to assert rights on what people did using Google Chrome, so I asked the Chrome team and Google lawyers for their reaction or to clarify (probably several other people pinged them too). Here’s what I heard back from Rebecca Ward, the Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome:

“In order to keep things simple for our users, we try to use the same set of legal terms (our Universal Terms of Service) for many of our products. Sometimes, as in the case of Google Chrome, this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don’t apply well to the use of that product. We are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome.”

And people say Google doesn’t listen to their users.

It also turns out that you can, in fact, run Chrome under WINE, but it isn’t quite perfect yet.

To the question of why Google shipped the Chrome beta for Windows users only, it seems someone goofed and published the comic too soon.

As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we’ve now made the comic publicly available — you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

They’re working hard to get OSX and Linux versions of Chrome ready to go, and once I see that Linux users have a native edition of Chrome I’ll publish a link. We should see Chrome in the Ubuntu repos shortly after a Linux beta is available, and if not I’m sure at least GetDeb.net will get packages for us Debian-based Linux users.

I’m still not sure if I want to use it. I’ve read a number of reviews on it and looked at screenshots and it looks way too minimal for my taste. I know they have some more features to add, but I’m not a fan of being quite that minimal. Plus the tabs above the address bar just look too frakking weird to me.

Updated 11:00: Dan Kegel let me know that the WINE Application Database has a page about getting Chrome installed and running. If you have any information on getting Chrome working under WINE please make a point of passing your results posted to the database.

Peng’s links for Wednesday, 3 September

I had a number of things to post, specially about Gustav and Google Chrome, but RL was so nuts the last few days that I decided to pare it down to just two links, especially since there a couple of sites who love to steal our content (especially mine) frickin’ verbatim. The lazy sonzofbitches need to either come up with their own content or close their damned blogs. Or at least give proper credit to the source.

I actually have just one thing I want to pass along, although from two different sources.

• Dante Díaz: Playdeb launched. Now Ubuntu gamers have a repository that can be used to install Linux games. Which games? How about these?
• Tom Dryer: Playdeb – The Gaming Repository for Ubuntu. Tombuntu is nice enough to give us some screenshots of using the Playdeb repo.

What about Google Chrome? I honestly can’t say how I feel about it personally. It’s only in beta, and while it’s a public beta it’s only available to Windows users. Since I don’t even have a Windows partition any more I can’t fire it up. True, I can try it in WINE, but if a web browser won’t run natively in Linux I’m not interested in using it. Although it looks like the Terms of Service for using Chrome are pretty heinous. From my own reading of the EULA I have no interest in loading this particular piece of Google code onto my hard drive, even if I do run other Google products.

Peng’s links for Monday, 25 August

• Simon Paquet: Philipp’s Developer Notes: Using CalDAV with Google Calendar. Philipp Kewisch, the developer of the Provider for Google Calendar extension for Mozilla Sunbird/Thunderbird/Lightning, recently saw that Google rolled out CalDAV support for gCalendar. Unfortunately the CalDAV support may make his extension obsolete.
• Ben Collins: Intrepid Ibex (8.10) Moves to 2.6.27. With the release of the Linux 2.6.27 kernel (list of changes) the Ubuntu devs have decided to use it in Ubuntu 8.10. While the change list may look like so much technobabble to many, just scanning I’m seeing some great improvements in store for the next version of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu. I can’t wait for Intrepid to reach Beta so I can start checking it out. (Updated 26 Aug 8:09a to fix the error pointed out by bielawski.)
• Globex Designs: Gmail Redesigned. I heard about this on a blog post by David Thomas, and I love how it changes the user interface for Gmail. You’ll need either Globex’s Google Redesigned extension or Stylish to use this theme, but other than the rather dark look (which I’m generally just not that big a fan of anyway) it makes Gmail feel more like an app than a web page. David’s right when he says “you’ll never go back to the old gmail interface.”

Peng’s links for Thursday, 17 July

• Planet Mozilla: Google calendar may display real names of other Google mail users. I meant to post this when I saw it yesterday but they day was so packed with jam (I love jam) that I couldn’t get back to it. If you use Gmail you’ll want to check it out and look for the bug to be squashed.
• Max Kanat-Alexander: Creating Complexity: Lock-In To Bad Technologies. Max expands a point in his post The Never-Shipping Product to look at what “bad” technology is. How can you pass up a post that mentions Microsoft Bob?
• Window Snyder: TippingPoint vulnerability patched in Firefox 3.0.1 and 2.0.0.16. I should have mentioned in yesterday’s post about the latest Firefox update that the vulnerability is fixed in an update of Firefox 3 that came out yesterday, but I must have missed reading that in my standard policy of not supporting Firefox 3. Mozilla’s security chief looks at the CSS vulnerability that got fixed in the updates.
• Aza Raskin: “Not The User’s Fault” Manifesto. Aza looks at Jono DiCarlo’s manifesto for writing open source code. There are some interesting points about Linux, but I strongly disagree with his take on UI design and marketing. Hooking UI design to the marketing department is part of why we got stuck with the Awesome Bar rather than the Smart Location Bar. But the post is still very much worth reading.
• SciFi Wire: Day: Dr. Horrible Part of Trend. Do you remember when I mentioned Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog las month? It’s up now and you’ll want to watch it, even if it’s just for a good reason to be glad Josh Whedon didn’t do a musical episode of Firefly. Even if Nathan (Mal Reynolds) Fillion can sing pretty well. And no, Jaynestown doesn’t qualify as a musical episode.
• DesktopLinux.com: Writer tells Penguinistas to chill on closed source. Does Nvidia get unfair treatment in the world of Linux because they haven’t opened their driver source code? One writer says yes, because other closed source projects get a free pass from Linux users.

Points to whoever can identify the reference I made in the first link. Also, I’m leaving comments open so people can comment on any of the links in today’s posts, but flaming comments about my unwillingness to support Firefox 3 will be deleted as soon as I’m aware they’ve been made. I keep my posts about Firefox 3 down to a bare minimum, some of you need to get over the fact that not everyone loves Mozilla’s newest browser.

Clarification: I love Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Once again Whedon shows his genius, especially since it was made on the sly during the writer’s strike. There’s just one or two moments in each of the first two parts that get a little too cheesy. Like the incredible TMI (in this case way Too Much information) moment at around 11:30 in part two. I can’t wait for part three and I hate that it’s the last part of the story.

/me shudders at the mere memory of the TMI.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 7 June

[Updated to include a link to info on installing Google Gadgets in Ubuntu. - Peng]

Sorry about not posting links the last couple of days. Let’s just say this flightless waterfowl was pretty toasty when I finally got my list of dumb things I had to do done, and it wasn’t from drinking. Although I sure did want a drink when I was done.

• David Thomas/Planet Ubuntu: Google Gadgets for Linux. One thing that Linux users have been missing from our list of Google tools is Desktop Gadgets. Davis tells us that we may not have to wait that much longer for them. Sweet! UPDATED 12:26pm: I found a thread on the Ubuntu Forums with instructions on installing them on Ubuntu via a PPA.
• John Slater/Planet Mozilla: The T-Shirt History of Mozilla. I have a Firefox tee that I’ve loved wearing (not so much now that Firefox 3 is almost out, and watch for a post this week about exactly why I don’t love this new version). Some of the Mozilla folks put together a history of Mozilla tees that you’ll probably get a kick out of. It’s great to see how the clothing presentation of Mozilla has evolved over the last decade.
• Markus Thielmann: Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. My last links post included a link to news about Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Markus wrote a piece on using it with Ubuntu Hardy.
• Ubuntu QA blog: Who wants a copy Ubuntu on the small screen…. Not only is Ubuntu coming to netbooks and MIDs, you will even be able to use it on your smartphone.
• Madhava Enros/Planet Mozilla: Get add-ons in Firefox 3. One of the nice things in Firefox 3 is that you can gett add-ons without having to point your brower to the Mozilla add-ons site.
• Alex Polvi/Planet Mozilla: State of the Add-ons Report: June 5th. Speaking of Firefox add-ons, Alex has a report on add-ons and their compatibility with Firefox 3.
• Mike Beltzer/Planet Mozilla: What’s new in Firefox 3? Here, let me show you! Mike has put together a screencast showing off the new features in Firefox 3. It’s already been on post by several others on Planet Mozilla, and I’m glad to say that it’s now been Stumbled.
• Wine HQ News: Wine 1.0-rc4 Released. The good people at WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) have stepped one step closer to the official release of Wine 1.0 yesterday with the release of their fourth Release Candidate. Ubuntu Hardy users can now get it if you have the hardy-proposed repo enabled.
• Ken Gurnick/LADodgers.com: Kuroda channels Dodgers history. Who cares about Dodger baseball you ask? If you’re a baseball fan you’ll want to read about this rookie from Osaka and his complete game shutout. It’s even more impressive when you see that he didn’t give up a single walk and struck out 11, including the last two batters he faced, and he only allowed four hits to the red hot Chicago Cubs. While you’re there you should check out some of the videos from the game, no matter what team you follow

Adorable Feline Pics of the Weekend

I have every intention of taking tomorrow off from blogging (I want to check out the latest SecondLife clients) so I’m going to give you a pair of kitties for the weekend. I didn’t get to post Thursday’s AFPotD, or one of the several pics from yesterday, so I hope these two kitties will brighten your weekend.

Damn but that pic looked like me the last couple of mornings, especially since my asshat neighbors kept me up until 11 pm Thursday night watching the damned Celtics game

This one may be me this evening. Except I have to watch out with my pain meds, especially after the last several days

Have a great weekend! I hope y’all can manage to keep cool this weekend. I know I plan on being in air conditioning as much as possible from here to Tuesday.