hello!

This is a great example of the power of collaboration and the spirit of open source at work.

Sunday morning Lessig tweeted that JZ was ill and why was a mystery — all true. The blog produced some amazingly helpful comments from people and doctors at large, including references to two discrete academic journal articles — one from a Korean medical journal from 1994! Thanks to the Net I had a copy on my PC and then e-faxed to the nurse’s station on my floor in a matter of minutes. In the meantime, over the course of today (Monday the 15th), additional results have come back to help narrow the diagnosis in a properly documentable and formal way — one that’s converging, it seems, to the obscure Korean article. To be clear, the terrific doctors here have been methodically arriving at this diagnosis already.

It goes to show how the ‘many eyes’ theory can be effectively applied in numerous areas and situations to solve problems. Yes, the tenets and virtues of open source are well publicized in the technology/software world, but the application of its spirit and thought process certainly should not be limited to this world.

stevenf.com

Read it. It’s awesome.

There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: “Hold your judgment until you’ve spent five minutes with it”. No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects.

Such a refreshing read. And that’s not because he really seems to love the iPad, but simply because it’s an honest candid take on Apple’s new product.

iPad About [Stephen Fry]

So Google finally has a proper deb package of Google Chrome for linux. About time too! Prior to this, I’ve seldom used Chrome, only a couple of times on Windows preferring instead to stick with Opera there. And I never bothered with Chromium.

Anyway, I’ve been using the Linux beta for a couple of days now and I must say I’m really impressed. There are many nice touches, some of which remind me of Opera at times.

• Speed!
• No separate downloads window. Downloads show in a new tab like Opera.
• The ability to “pin” a tab. I love how my most used tabs can be pinned and they take much less space.
• More screen real estate for webpages. Ok, I liked this from the first time I tried Chrome.
• Extensions! I somehow always felt Firefox extensions slowed down my browsing experience, so I never bothered with them. But unlike Firefox, Chrome extensions feel unintrusive and lean. I remember the Delicious extension on Firefox doing way too many things I didn’t want it to. All extensions on Chrome just add a simple button next to the address bar. However, there are some really great extensions and I do not notice any slowdown in the browser. Among the recommended extensions: Feedly, Google Mail Checker, Delicious Bookmarker. And they all work very well.
• The little status bar at the bottom when you hover on a link. Again un-intrusive and neat.
• The bookmarks bar which conveniently pops up when a new tab is opened.
• Despite the themes, it integrates nicely with GTK.

It’s my primary browser for now. At least until Opera 10.5 or Firefox 4. :)

I’ve had Docky installed for a couple of months now. Sure, a dock à-la mac at the bottom of the screen looks pretty. I mean really pretty:

Yes, it gets noticed all right. Especially with those weather updates. However, there were just too many inconveniences I had to put up with just for a pretty dock. Eventually, it just wasn’t worth it. A dock (like Docky) in its current state just does not fit in my workflow.

I’m not sure how different the dock in OS X is vis-à-vis Docky. I have also tried AWN, but I found it inferior to Docky. So anyway, for the purposes of this post, I’ll just use Docky as an example.

More clicks to do the same thing

The dock works great as a launcher. However, when it comes to window management, the limitations start to show. If I have 2 or more windows of the same app open, I need an extra click to get to what I want.

One click to see the list, and the other to select what I need.

Lack of information

It gets worse when a particular window needs your attention, and that happens frequently in IM apps. The app icon in the dock bounces but it’s not immediately evident which window needs your attention.

Turns out you again need an additional click to find out.

I don’t like scrubbing

So you autohide the dock. I don’t want it floating over my apps. That’s well and good. But when the dock comes back up, I have to go through the length of the dock (possibly to get the labels to appear) and find what I need. With the panel, you know where to go and you just do.

Similar icons

This may not be Docky’s fault, but if I have to documents open in OpenOffice Writer, both icons are the same in the dock. There is no way to distinguish one from the other. I need to hover the mouse to get an idea of what that icon represents and again, that is additional work I don’t really want to do.

I’ve been thinking how to present more information to the user to find things faster in the dock, while maintaining its ease of use and simplicity. And it still needs to look cool I suppose. I’ll try to post some ideas once I get more time to think through them.

What’s your take on docks? How different is the Mac OS X dock from the variants on linux and windows? I’d love to hear any feedback on this.

Michael Jackson and the Zombieconomy - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org

I am truly surprised by how saddened I am over the news of Michael Jackson’s death. Sure, my musical tastes have changed considerably with time, but Michael Jackson has always stayed in my collection over the years. RIP.

Aw man, I just went to the official upcoming Transformers movie website and I’m even more apprehensive about Michael Bay and the movie now.

One of my big complaints about the first movie (besides giving Optimus Prime ‘lips’, oh the horror of it all) was the soundtrack. The music of the first movie was very mediocre at best. It was more akin to choosing currently popular songs and putting them together on a disc. And Mute Math has a lame rendition of the Transformers theme, so bad it shouldn’t have the transformers name on it.

Anyway, things don’t seem to be improving on that front. Linkin Park’s new single “new divide” starts playing as the website loads. How that song (or any other song chosen for the previous soundtrack) will ever fit in the Transformers universe I will never know. Here’s a snippet of the lyrics of this song:

So give me reason / to prove me wrong / to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
Give me reason / to fill this hole / connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies
Across this new divide

Great, now who in the movie could be such a whiny idiot? The Transformers are all way too awesome and badass so they’re out. And well, as for the humans, who cares about them in the movie anyway? Meh. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play “The Transformers” by Lion on repeat for a bit.

Something evil’s watching over you
Comin’ from the sky above
And there’s nothing you can do

Prepare to strike
There’ll be no place to run
When you’re caught within the grip
Of the evil Unicron

Now that’s more like it.

Old? Yes.
Cheesy? Yes.
Still totally freaking awesome? Optimus Prime says it is!

I haven’t spent much time with Windows 7 or Mac OS X, but the next time someone asks me what the major improvements are in the new Ubuntu, I’ll point them to this link.

You won’t see it from the press releases or the feature lists. Or from the screenshots (which typically show the the same old Gnome panels). But the slick and polished UI in Ubuntu 9.04 is on par with any other OS out there.

Apps launch faster, everything feels snappier and (with a few minor exceptions) things are where they should be in the user interface.

Hardy was never very stable for me (I skipped Intrepid completely), and it would bring my machine to a crawl after extended use. But none of that with Jaunty. I browse the web, download torrents, watch videos, listen to music, rip/encode music/videos…and Jaunty sill feels very fast.

The slick new notifications system helps enormously too. I’d love to see more applications use the new system for notifications. And fonts just look nice from a default install. Those who complain about ‘wiry’ fonts in linux will be pleased. They look just as good if not better as other operating systems now.

You’ll notice many nice touches as you use Jaunty (which is getting typical of this release). Wallpapers fade into one another when you change them. Switching virtual desktops keeps the panels the place, and only slides your open windows out of the way.

And of course, you have all the other features that have already been mentioned elsewhere. I definitely noticed a marked improvement in boot time, which is great. But it’s the slick new UI which will make your computer so much fun to use again.

(And I can finally haz the new Gnome Do. Docky is a great productivity booster.)

There still is an option for free music streaming after Last.fm radio which is now a paid service. And it works outside the US, UK and Germany too (yes, music lovers do exist elsewhere). Enter Grooveshark.

I signed up on Grooveshark when they were in private beta, sometime in 2007. And I just decided to check out how much the site has changed, and wow! They’ve come a long way. What used/aspired to be a legal P2P music sharing network is now a full-fledged web-based radio and music player.

Media Player (and the social works)

You can upload your local music collection and listen to it from anywhere (like Anywhere.fm that imeem acquired last year). This barely worked for me when I tried it a couple of years ago, but it’s flawless now.

And of course, you have all social works in the form of tags, friends etc… You can follow and add people with similar tastes to your friends list. Grooveshark also recommends similar users.

The Radio

This is the best part. Search for a play any track. My artist searches all returned a decent amount of results. I usually found the track I wanted. (No silly 30 second samples! Yay). You can love, tag and share track or create and share playlists.

With autoplay switched on, Grooveshark will populate your playlist with tracks it thinks you might like based on what you’re listening to. And it’ll tailor the recommendations based on your feedback. It’s like Pandora or Last.fm, but works everywhere.

What this will eventually let me do is keep a collection of all the music I like (including those in my local collection) in one place, and I can listen to it all from any computer. Remember that cool song you heard the other day? No need to go watch that youtube video again. Add it as a favourite on Grooveshark.

Bottomline

Last.fm does a lot of the social stuff better, it’s a great service to bring people together around music. And it’s probably still better for creating your music profile and history. But Grooveshark really shines as a web-based music player and radio (and that’s what the interface seems to focus on as well). It brings to mind a web-based version of Spotify, and lets you add your local music library as a bonus too. Yes, I’ve mentioned many names in this post, but the service does come off as a cross between Pandora, Last.fm, Anywhere.fm and Spotify.

This isn’t a review - I still need to spend more time on Grooveshark for that. But for what it is, Grooveshark is very well done and I can imagine spending a lot of time going from track to track, and discovering new music. I only have two things on my wishlist: last.fm scrobbling support and an iPhone app for music on the go. ;)

P.S. And if you happen to be on or sign up for Grooveshark, I’m ramkumar over there.