Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Go, Goobuntu!
Good Morning Silicon Valley's terrific John Paczkowski reports that Google seems indeed to be working on a desktop OS, "Goobuntu," based on the Ubunto Linux distribution. John points to an interesting screenshot, too.
Despite the fact that Apple's kinda nifty OS keeps evolving interesting features and because of the imminent appearance of Windows Vista, whose principal virtues appear to be better security from viruses and Trojans (as long as you pay up for OneCare) and deep DRM, which is only a virtue for big sellers of Content,
Despite the fact that Apple's kinda nifty OS keeps evolving interesting features and because of the imminent appearance of Windows Vista, whose principal virtues appear to be better security from viruses and Trojans (as long as you pay up for OneCare) and deep DRM, which is only a virtue for big sellers of Content,
Operating systems no longer matter.
They don't. The desktop metaphor is ancient and tired. The personal productivity tools and environment we all take for granted are ill suited for group work. Web services are looking better and better (though their integration still leaves much to be desired). Connectivity just keeps getting better (though the telcos seem determined to keep us second-rate in order to defend their business models).
There's a great opening now for a legacy-free, Net-savvy, open open open OS that takes advantage of all the MIPS on your average machine to do things quickly for users, rather than ping central servers to check if what you have on your hard drive is "authorized."
The Linux laptop initiatives haven't figured this one out. Archy, Croquet and other initiatives are interesting and may suit some people, but I'd sure like to find something that suits me better than Windoze XP. This year, I may get to experiment with just that. Very exciting.
Oh, it'd be nice if Goobuntu ran on open cellphones, too.
They don't. The desktop metaphor is ancient and tired. The personal productivity tools and environment we all take for granted are ill suited for group work. Web services are looking better and better (though their integration still leaves much to be desired). Connectivity just keeps getting better (though the telcos seem determined to keep us second-rate in order to defend their business models).
There's a great opening now for a legacy-free, Net-savvy, open open open OS that takes advantage of all the MIPS on your average machine to do things quickly for users, rather than ping central servers to check if what you have on your hard drive is "authorized."
The Linux laptop initiatives haven't figured this one out. Archy, Croquet and other initiatives are interesting and may suit some people, but I'd sure like to find something that suits me better than Windoze XP. This year, I may get to experiment with just that. Very exciting.
Oh, it'd be nice if Goobuntu ran on open cellphones, too.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Email helps link the global brain
In a thoughtful editorial in today's New York Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg describes his addiction to email. Rather than ranting about the email flood, as email volumes these days would justify, he compares it to the postal service and examines how it's all affected his life. I especially like this paragraph:
In the spirit of lifehacking, it would be useful to have an email client that would honor "office hours" automatically. Finer-grained controls would put only personal messages in front of me during certain periods, or only messages from certain people (related to the A-list task at hand!).
I do know that I'm in better touch over email than ever before with other media. It's overwhelming often, but deeply connecting.
I think of e-mail as a continuing psychology experiment that studies the effect on humans of abrupt, frequently repeated stimuli — often pleasurable, sometimes not, but always with the positive charge that comes from seeing new mail in the inbox. So far, the experiment has revealed, in me, the synaptic responses of a squirrel. It is a truism of our time that we now have shorter attention spans than ever before. I don't think that is true. What we have now are electronic media that can pulse at the actual rate of human thought. We have the distinct discomfort of seeing our neural pace reflected in the electronic world around us.I often find myself checking for mail when I shouldn't be, because it feels like looking for gifts. Every now and then, little gems drop in there and I get an endorphin rush. I wonder what paths are being reinforced or built in my brain.
In the spirit of lifehacking, it would be useful to have an email client that would honor "office hours" automatically. Finer-grained controls would put only personal messages in front of me during certain periods, or only messages from certain people (related to the A-list task at hand!).
I do know that I'm in better touch over email than ever before with other media. It's overwhelming often, but deeply connecting.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Open content economic conference at MIT
Mary Hodder is blogging live from the TV-centric Economics of Open Content conference at MIT.
Great list of speakers, from Von Hippel (lead users) and Benkler (Coase's Penguin, Sharing Nicely) to Surowiecki (wise crowds) and Anne Margulies of MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative.
Well worth watching.
Great list of speakers, from Von Hippel (lead users) and Benkler (Coase's Penguin, Sharing Nicely) to Surowiecki (wise crowds) and Anne Margulies of MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative.
Well worth watching.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
