microsoft » Skunkworks

Google Chrome OS ? Thanks, but no thanks.

Jul 092009

I’ve got the news about the new Google endeavor from their official blog yesterday morning. After reading all sort of comments on the net I’ve realized that I don’t see any need for Google Chrome OS and most probably is just a preemptive strike against Microsoft at one level and probably Facebook at a different level.

Let me explain. Most probable Google Chrome OS will consist in a Linux kernel, a new window manager and Google Chrome browser on top of all these. Keep in mind that Ubuntu as of 9.04 has an official release for ARM processors. If you need a similar experience today you can get Ubuntu Mini iso (which is a 12 MB download) for x86 architectures. Most probably starting with 9.10 release it will be available for ARM architectures also.

Then, check the instructions from this ubuntu forum . Idea is that you need to install a few packages from the command line:

sudo apt-get -y install gnome-core gdm network-manager-gnome fast-user-switch-applet human-theme x11-xserver-utils tangerine-icon-theme gnome-themes-ubuntu ubuntu-artwork jockey-gtk gnome-screensaver gnome-utils

apt-get install laptop-mode-tools ubuntu-laptop-mode wpasupplicant # this one is for supporting a laptop

apt-get install maximus # this one is for achieving the maximizing effect from the Ubuntu Netbook Release .

Then using Ubuntu Tweak and Add / Remove Programs from Ubuntu desktop environment you can install Firefox 3.5, Google Desktop (with gadgets support), Google Gears, AWN and Firefox Prism . I’ve also installed Pidgin and VLC. The bottom line you get an web oriented OS which takes around 80 MB of RAM (at idle) and is very responsive.

On the other hand take a look at all these links:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10282037-56.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10280270-56.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10006582-56.html

http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/3a1eac42/why-did-google-announce-chrome-os-this-week-well

And all these announcements from Google related to Google Apps out of beta this week and Google Chrome OS makes more sense.

So the way I see things Google won’t be able to change the status quo in the OS world.

But if Google some how succeeds we will run a Google OS on a Google approved device using only (is going to be only a matter of time ) Google services (no Facebook or Twitter for you). And btw you will probably have Google Analytics at desktop level .

For all these reasons I will stick with the Web OS option that I described at the beginning. If I am wrong in my assumptions let me know in a comment.

Google Notebook Is No More

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Jan 152009

This morning I got the news that Google will close many services. The one that affected me was Google Notebook. I had a lot of information in it and even if Google says that I can still use it and add information to the notebooks, I do not feel at ease with that. So, I decided to export all the information out of Google Notebook and import it in Scrapbook . I don’t think is the best option, but I know the information is on my hard drive. The export was relatively easy to do, and once the export was finished I realized that the amount of information that I have on Google servers was minuscule (less than 70 MB archived).

For the moment this service closing is just a minor annoyance, but should be an alarm signal. Trust is something that is very difficult to build and very easy to loose. Probably in the higher levels of Google hierarchy they decided that the amount of information that the users are storing in the notebooks does not improve the relevance of the adverts served to those users in Gmail or in the Google search pages. So they decided that Notebook is not needed for their plans. Once Google chooses to close some services, it’s obvious that if the situation is going to be even worst they could choose to close other services. I know the service was free, but I would have like to have a better export option at least.

On the other hand something else to take in the account. Because Microsoft is making a lot of money with their offline software (Server, Windows, Office and so on) they can afford to loose some money with the online division, so they are able to still offer a lot of things for free. The most interesting to me is the 25GB Skydrive storage space. I start uploading some non vital files for testing purposes and it seems to work pretty well. Once Microsoft announced this some months ago, I expected that Google will match this, but nothing happened. This was my first alarm signal that maybe not everything is nice and dandy in the Googleplex.

Now I am looking for an offline RSS reader that would match Google Reader capabilities and if I will find one, then Gmail is the last thing that still has me linked to Google Services.

I know I can replace Analytics and Feedburner anytime with other options for skunkworks.ro

It appears that all good things are coming to an end. And I am sure now that in the next months a lot of free services from other Web 2.0 companies will dissapear. Probably is best to start thinking offline software again and somehow find the means to maintain the collaboration level and community feeling that the Web 2.0 services are offering

Azure vs AppEngine at first glance

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Oct 272008

Today, Microsoft launched Azure which is the Microsoft OS for the cloud. I am not going to enter into technical details or compare Azure with AppEngine or Amazon Web Services. Something else grabbed my attention. Continue reading »

The second coming of the Iphone.

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Jun 112008

I’ve watched the Steve Jobs keynote from a few days ago that culminated with the Iphone 3G presentation. My take is that this is going to be my next phone . This being said, below you have my critique of the device and the associated software

The device seems complete and the reason for the missing things it seems to me that it has to do a lot more with the marketing part than to the real technical dificulties. I am sure that if they really wanted they could have implemented a front camera with ichat video capabilities but that would have been a direct attack at ATT.

Also the way Apple is solving the multitasking issues is pure genius. Not from technical point of view but from business point of view. Apple will be able to control what and when goes to your phone from all the apps that will run on the Iphone.

I am not at all happy with the way Apple implemented their Mesh version (btw now it makes perfect sense why Microsoft had choose to preview the Mesh in advance, even they didn’t had the mobile support implemented). It seems that Apple is not able to make up it’s mind. If the syncronisation works so well why are you duplicating Google’s work and create a suite of web based apps? At least the way Microsoft is doing it you aren’t presented with duplicated way of doing things. Also it seems to me that Microsoft has the edge on this one from technical point of view. I am sure I am not going to pay 99$ per year for something that I can have for free one way or another.

Not sure if something can be done related to the video and audio codec support. I hope that the VLC for iphone project is completely succesful. Also it seems to me that the storage capacity is too small. Because now I am sure that a good part of that storage capacity is going to be taken by the application data.

Last point that I want to make is the lack of device level encryption. I may be wrong but so far I am pretty sure that you can not have something similar with truecrypt in the Iphone firmware. I know thath you can nuke an iphone remotely but I would be happier if I know that my personal data is encrypted and unavailable if I loose my phone

.Mac vs LiveMesh

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May 132008

Lately I tried to go through all the buzz that LiveMesh generated. After watching all the videos on channel 9 and channel 10 (microsoft videos) I am disapointed. I don’t denied the posibilities that livemesh could generate. But if you go to .Mac and to LiveMesh you will see that at this moment LiveMesh is not able to do what .Mac is doing it. The only advantage is that you get LiveMesh for free.

WorldWideTelescope hype

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Feb 292008

When I read about this 1 week ago, and the NDA Robert Scobble had to obey, I thought that what Microsoft is going to show is going to be huge. After I watched the video presentation at TED I am dissapointed. Maybe my expectations were too high but from the video it seems that this software is not able to do much more than pan and zoom . I would go as far as saying that I am still more impressed with the animations and the tours that you can create in Celestia which is and old opensource software which runs on every OpenGL enabled computer OS and creates amazing graphics. The difference between WorldWideTelescope and Celestia is the fact that in one you get the images by downloading them at the time you are doing the zoom and in Celestia you already have the images and objects downloaded as textures. Without actually seeing the software would be wrong for me to go any further with the criticism but I will say that most probably this software is not going to be much better than Google Sky. Also I am sure that the marketing money of Microsoft will prevail this time.

DRM is bad for your health

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Aug 302007

In the last 2 weeks 3 things happened which involved 3 different companies which should tell everybody that DRM infection is bad for you.
First Google closed his video store and then automatically your videos, which one may argue belongs to you after you payed for them, become unusable. Then Microsoft had issues with the activation servers for Vista and as a result 12000 users (according to Microsoft) had reduced functionality or locked systems. Think of the “activation” as DRM applied to software. And now today I read about Sony which is switching the online music store from ATRAC (the DRM infected sound format) to Windows Media in US (another DRM infected sound format). In their FAQ they suggest to the users that have music in ATRAC format bought from the store to burn an audio CD and then ripped the CD in MP3 format for the user to continue to enjoy the music that they already bought.

Somehow these companies are managing to campaign against DRM better than all the organizations that are fighting against DRM.

Photosynth Second Take

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Jun 052007

Some time ago I played and wrote about Photosynth. Now a couple of days ago I watched a demo of the technology behind the software at TED 2007. You can see the demo on the TED site. The Microsoft employee mentioned there the code name for the technology “Sea Dragon”. Again another term that worth search it for on your favorite search engine.

It is amazing to see how easy they are playing with images which are big. And I mean BIG (tens of gigapixels, maybe even more). It is more amazing to see how easy and fast they are able to look (visual search) for all kind of visual features in the big image.

It is so easy to look for human faces in a video surveillance “tape” that is scary. Also the availability of video surveillance equipment especially in big cities is scaring. If you put these technologies together than makes sense for the conspiracy theorist in me to say that “they” and I do no mean Microsoft, were using this kind of technology for years most probably tens of years.

A sign of things to come

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May 312007

Yesterday Microsoft launched Microsoft Surface which is a computer system with an interface similar with Jef Han multitouch presentation from TED 2005. If you want details about the system, you need to search for it in your favorite search engine. I will just say 2 things:

The way the system talks with other devices other WIFI and Bluetooth is much more interesting then the innovative GUI paradigm.
Is the first time in months when Windows Vista (the OS that this system uses) appears in all sorts of articles, and no one mentions the DRM in Vista and how bad is for the world . And this is happening because everybody is busy talking about something much more interesting then DRM. A new computing paradigm from Microsoft. A proof that the big giant is awakening and slowly moving towards new territories.

A sign of things to come

Microsofties writing code for Firefox

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Feb 272007

This morning when I did my digg routine I stumbled upon a link which was pointing to Photosynth software (which development I followed in the last 6 months) from Microsoft labs. To my surprise I was able to install the Firefox extension from live.labs.com .

I won’t comment on the Photosynth software. I will just say that is strange, beautiful, and without a doubt I am not able to get a useful thing out of it other than the kind of fun I get when I am playing a nice game. I would really like to see what’s behind the software (the magic that makes everything happen).

The most interesting part is the fact that if I am not mistaking this is the first piece of software from Microsoft which can be run in a browser other than Internet Explorer. Is something similar with Bush and Bin Laden having a coffee together. It is the first sign that Microsoft is recognizing the life outside their empire. I wonder if this extension is running on Linux also. My laptop is an Ubuntu Linux machine, but the video card is too weak. That would be even more interesting.

The question to ask is what are the real plans of Microsoft? Why are they writing an extension just to make sure that the 80% users of Internet Explorer and the 15% users of Firefox are using this software?

Google Chrome OS ? Thanks, but no thanks.

Google Notebook Is No More

The second coming of the Iphone.

.Mac vs LiveMesh

WorldWideTelescope hype

DRM is bad for your health

Photosynth Second Take

A sign of things to come

Microsofties writing code for Firefox

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