Colin Charles Agenda

So, a while back, Dr. Nah, announced that my-opensource.org will be no more. I guess its a sad day, because the ever (in)famous myoss@my-opensource.org list, which has been around since 1998 (or earlier?) is now, no more.

It is now at myoss@lists.foss.org.my it would seem. And Khairil, who runs the box has created a rather important list for the newbies: one to get their Questions answered.

Of course in myoss tradition, it has expanded the discussion into one that asks if a forum is better, and a whole bunch of other things. Knowing them, it’ll get a lot larger, but its fun reading ;-) And if you’re new, and have a FLOSS related question, don’t bother about the rants on myoss, just post to the Questions list.

Technorati Tags: foss, malaysia, myoss

Some interesting quotes I’ve picked up so far:

• Good tools obviate bad processes.
• My hands shake, because I’m a functional alcoholic. My name is Wil Shipley, and I like rum.

Interesting time here at WWDC. Had martinis with some of the office:mac MacBU team, and heard some interesting things. The traditional AU/NZ party, which had Andrew giving us even more drink coupons than we bargained for. Then on to blogger party, which had drinks served by NewsGator (now I feel a whole lot more fuzzier paying for NetNewsWire!), and the next major event would be the Campus Bash. Food this year was sparse (i.e. I didn’t seem to get any, as they’d cleared up).

It’d seem like WWDC is an annual event of fun. And it is. The real value of which stems from the fact that you might have 4-6 coffees a day, learn a lot, and then move on to 4-6 beers a night. Throw in bagels in the morning (mmm, yum, I wish more bagel stores were around in Melbourne), a fairly healthy lunch of salads (perils of talking and going to lunch too late), and pizza for dinner and its quite heavenly.

Leopard has been previewed, and every other blog or news site has written about it. All I can say (without violating the NDA) is that there are some cool features abound when 10.5 comes out. By then, Vista would have come out. And the expectation of a “Linux desktop” would have dramatically shifted (among the home users, at least – corporations I still have hope for).

It is however interesting to see that Apple seems to be “ripping” features out of the Linux desktop. Spaces? Hello virtual workspaces. Then there are some sillies, like encouraging HTML email via “templates”.

One interesting feature seems to be the CalDAV server. (Keeping up with the Forge trend), check out Collaboration on Mac OS Forge.

If iChat throws up a Feedbag error 10 (what oh what is a feedbag?) its because you’ve got a “Recent Buddies” group in AIM. Remove that with something sensible like Adium, and suddenly, like magic, you’ll be able to add AIM and .Mac accounts again.

It doesn’t seem well documented, but this macnn post seems to be somewhat useful. Is there still a Radar Friday going on?

So, is there one? Is it at the Thirsty Bear again? Can someone point me to some details, as I’d love to go.

play. food. code.
Maybe it isn’t 42. There’s been an insane number of uploads in the last couple of days to Flickr for me… fast upload speeds help. Boy do I dread going back to 256kbps uploads on Optus.

I dusted off the N770, and installed the new Maemo 2.0 Internet 2006 Tablet edition (probably worth reading the update guide – make sure you have the 2.0 Flasher). While I was at it, I set up scratchbox again.

In the sbox environment, if you need to install something, remember to use fakeroot (just pre-pend it to the command you’re running).

I must admit that I’m quite excited with the GTalk functionality. Holding the 770’s speaker to my ear, the microphone is just where my mouth is. Rumor has it (upon opening it up) that the mic is exactly the same as the one used in mobile phones that Nokia make. The quality of the audio is actually surprisingly good – I’m quite happy with the fact that I now have a VoIP WiFi phone. The other good thing about GTalk is that I can be connected on OS X, Linux, as well as my 770 – I like the idea of having multiple presences. If only more people used GTalk (as opposed to MSN)! (reach me at ccharles@gmail.com)

All the telephony options become even more interesting with Gizmo Project and their recent release of the 770 ARM client. I’ve had an account with the Gizmo Project almost since they started offering a Linux and an OS X client (I think the latter came first). I’ve hardly made much use of it, mainly because a lot of the folk I know are still connected to Skype. SkypeOut is also something I use from time-to-time, but now, it seems that the Gizmo equivalent is also not too bad. SIgning up with them gives you a little free credit, and I still had it after all this time, so a test call via the Nokia 770 proved to be useful.

My mother, some 4,500 miles away from me heard me loud and clear. Again, I’m hooked, and wish more people were on the Gizmo Project. Best part about it is you don’t actually need to even fire up the client, you can use standard SIP phone software, like Ekiga, to get things working. I don’t know if this works for dialing out to non-Gizmo Project users, but it’s on my to-do list to give it a go. Another boon is the fact that I can be logged in via OS X, Linux, and on the 770 – again, multiple presences at work. If only more people used the Gizmo Project (as opposed to Skype)! (reach me at colincharles)

One complaint that I have with the Gizmo Project is that you need to install not just one file, but three – it forces Bonjour on you (even if you have howl, it doesn’t seem to care), and you need a separate sound library (that can either be OSS or ALSA based). I guess this is where Skype wins with the one-file installer.

The other complaint is that when making a Gizmo-to-Gizmo call, the interface seems clunky enough to not allow me to pick up the phone call! On OS X its Growl, I click the answer interface and it doesn’t work. On Linux, its the same deal. On the 770, I pick it up and nothing happens. I seem to have problems making Gizmo-to-Gizmo calls, anyone had any success?