Lunch Hour Report: Windows 7, DOSbox and XBMC

First off, I'll start by apologizing for being late on the post. I got stuck in a meeting so I'm having to take my lunch hour later than normal. Now, on to the news.

Lets start off with Microsoft and Windows 7. If you're reading this post, you likely are away that Microsoft is planning to release Windows 7 sometime near the end of next year, but today I found some benchmarks for it, and they look promising. Supposedly the speed is "head and shoulders above Vista SP1." Even though I still hold that I'm a linux guy, this is kinda interesting because as much as I don't like some of the things Microsoft does, or some of it's policies, on the tier of things that I don't agree with the policies of, Microsoft falls below some other companies, namely Apple and their lock down on the iPhone apps.

Next, I want to show you something very cool that I found today on LinuxJournal.com. I found an article while browsing their collection on setting up DOSbox, a nifty little program that's similar to WINE, in the respect that it emulates a Microsoft environment for the purpose of running apps native to that other OS, but this one, unlike wine, is designed to run DOS programs. In the tutorial in the article, they show you how to install it and set it up to play the original Duke Nukem game. I have DOSbox installed on my laptop which is running Ubuntu 8.10, but I've never actually installed any useful applications on it. I saw it in the apt repositories one day and said, "Hey, that's neat, that might come in handy some day", so I installed it. Now I have an excuse, that game was one of my childhood favorites, within the ranks of Sonic 2 and Kirby's Dreamland in my book.

Finally, I'm going to take a look at Xbox Media Center (XBMC). This little program is something I stumbled upon back in the days when I was in the process of modding my Xbox, chipping it, new hard drive, Linux OS and XBMC. I loved the application on the Xbox and when I found out that they ported it to the x86 platform under Windows, Linux and Mac I was very happy. So, it's not really anything new really, but it's something worthy of mentioning if nothing else. I haven't yet installed it on my laptop, but it is running on my Desktop which right now runs Windows XP SP3 and it runs absolutely flawlessly. There are a few features that I can't use just because of my hardware setup on my desktop, but overall, the look and feel of application is great. Very professional looking and it makes a great alternate for anyone who wants a media center PC and has a Vista version such as Business that doesn't come with the media center built in or if you're running a flavor of linux and don't want to put up with some of the hassles of some of the other media center applications (even if some of them are a bit more feature rich when they run properly).

Lunch Hour Report: HP and Linux, Google and SMS and Japan with renewable energy

Looks like HP has finally given in to the will of it's users and is now offering up computers with Linux preloaded on them. Nice move for HP, seeing that they were the last one of the Tier 1 computer companies to make the move. Reportedly, "The problem was HP was a house divided when it came to shipping a Linux desktop." Seems like the people who knew the technology, the developers, wanted it. But those people who were more in the management side of things didn't want to touch the idea. Seems like they finally got their heads straight though and I'm glad to see that the people who know the technology are finally starting to impact the products that this company makes, maybe they'll actually start producing decent computers.

On another note, it looks like Google has enabled it's users to now send SMS messages via gChat. An interesting feature that I foresee putting a dent in the profits of the cell phone companies. With phones like the G1 and others now starting to use the Google Android OS, the gChat program will start to be more and more common on cell phones and if techno-wise people, like myself, are as smart as I think we are. I see people taking advantage of this and canceling their text messaging service, or at least lowering the number of texts that they pay for per month because of this new feature...Now, if only they would unblock gChat and Gmail at work, I would be all set and I could actually reach some of my friends about that thing we were doing tonight when I get off work.

And Finally, East Japan Railway Company has developed a method of converting the energy of all it's passengers walking in and out of terminals, into electrical power to power electronic billboard signs. Now, I don't normally refer to myself as a tree hugger or "greenie" or what have you, but I do promote self sustainability, this is just one great example of a country doing that. Now, if only the US companies would take the same initiative that JR East has and start developing these things for themselves rather then waiting for the government to require them to take action and do it.

New Ideas: The Lunch Hour Report

I'm going to start posting every day from 3PM to 4PM on a topic of my choosing. It will still fall within the scope of the blog, but this will be a guaranteed post every day. I'll be making it during my lunch hour, so I've named it "The Lunch Hour Report".

SongBird 1.0 Review

Earlier, we saw the release of SongBird v.1.0 and a lot of people were extremely impressed with the RC1 release and so when the final release came out, I made use to download it as soon as possible and I've been using it ever since. In a nutshell, this application has got to be the best music player I have ever used in my entire life. I used to be a pretty die-hard Winamp (windows) and Xmms (linux) user but with the maturing of SongBird, it has officially taking the number one spot on my list of music players. It has a full load of features, from basic music library organization to streaming audio. Thanks to it's ability to accept plug-ins just as easily as Firefox does, it can be expanded to do just about anything else you want as well. Most notably, it has plug-ins to add album artwork from Last.FM and there are even plug-ins to give you twitter feed access and a web browser right inside your music player. Now, this isn't to say it's without faults. It's not the fastest loading or lightest playback application around and it also doesn't yet have support for ripping or burning CDs, however, they are expected to be implemented in future releases and I'm sure there will be a number of 3rd party developers making plug-ins to add these features in this release. So, if you're interested in giving it a shot for yourself, it's available cross-platform from GetSongBird.com, make your own opinion on it and let me know what you think of it by leaving a comment at the end of this post.

I will also make a note that it's currently not available on the Ubuntu/Debian app sources and the getsongbird.com site only offers it in a tar.gz format for the linux platform so it can be used on multiple distros. If you want the .deb package for it, point your browser over to this post on Ubuntu Forums where you'll find a link to the deb package made by a third party, I used it, worked fine.

Linux Hits the iPhone

Gotta love this video. I still have personal issues with [Cr]apple and and their pricing and strict limitations on the iPhone and most of their products, but I will say that they come out with some really slick devices sometimes. I'm just glad to see that Linux finally made it to the iPhone...now, if someone could take this idea and try to drop android on it, we would be all set.(See boot video below)


iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.

Google Calendar Now Supports iCal

So, in a googlemac blogspot post Google announced today that they would start supporting iCal to synchronize it with google calendar. And, while that is a great thing for all the iCal users, I have one question...why do you still not support two way syncronization with google calendar through Mozilla Thunderbird without installing a third party plugin, yet you support it with iCal, a program that is used by only a niche market of people who can afford a Mac?

Either way, I'm not bashing Mac or Google for this, I just want to know why it's so difficult? Is there some mechanism that makes syncing iCal easier than Thunderbird? Come on Google, you have software that is free for the public to use, so start supporting those who continue the trend of free software use by Thunderbird users the same pleasure that the rich Mac users now have.

Steam Linux: Updates

So, I found some info on Arstechnica today that helps re-enforce my claim from the other day that Valve is on the way to porting the steam platform (and with it, the games) to the open source platform of Linux. This could be a huge boost for the popularity of Linux as a gaming OS, as the argument for many people not making the switch is poor game support on the operating system. Now, before I continue, I'm not making the claim that Microsoft should be shaking in their boots (but you know they are). However, I will say this, and that is that with this, comes Valve's virtual stamp of approval that the Linux platform is now a viable desktop operating system that has the potential to be a new market for them and considering the influence that Valve is in the gaming community, that could push some of the other gaming companies to start following suit and publishing more games on the Linux platform, and if nothing else, that should start giving Microsoft the chills and the hair stand on the back of their necks if not but just a little bit. So, to say the least I'm very happy about Valve's decision to do this and I wish the best of luck to them in this undertaking, it's not small task to port a game over to run on a new platform, let alone the mammoth empire of a gaming ecosystem that Steam has become, but I'm excited and can't wait to see what the future holds once this becomes official.