Jim Lynch: Off the Top of My Head…

I’ve had a change of heart about putting columns on this blog. When I first left ET I was going to use this as a place for news blogging and also for opinion columns. But I’ve decided it makes more sense to put the opinion columns on Jim Lynch: Tech Analyst and Community Manager rather than mix them in here.

So if you’re a subscriber to this blog and you want to read my opinion columns you should subscribe to that blog via RSS or email.

The last two I’ve written are 5 Reasons Why I Love Mac OS X Snow Leopard! and Google Chrome OS: The Unnecessary Operating System. I’ve also moved the 5 Reasons Why World of Warcraft Doesn’t Suck column over to the other blog too.

Thanks and sorry for any confusion resulting from what I said in my goodbye note at ExtremeTech. News blogging interests me less than writing full-blown columns and reviews so that’s what I’ll be focused on for the most part with an occasional drop-in over to this blog once in a blue moon.

And don’t forget to visit the blogs of my fellow ETers Joel, Loyd, Robert and Jason to see what they’re up to lately. A very good idea to subscribe to their blogs too so you can keep up with their latest content exploits.

The Register has an interesting preview/review of Mac OS X Snow Leopard:

I like Snow Leopard, and found moving back to Leopard quite surprisingly painful. Was it really so slow? It didn’t feel so a week ago.

There’s some controversy about how “64-bit” this upgrade really is. I have no complaints about compatibility, and 10.6 promises to be a much smoother upgrade than going from 10.4 to 10.5. Leopard proved to be an excellent release in the end, but many people experienced driver issues and other gotchas.

By setting expectations low for its successor, and with a price to match, I’m sure a lot of people are going to be pleasantly surprised. If performance matters, it could be $29/£25 very well spent. Too bad G4 and G5 hold-outs don’t get their own optimised version – they need it the most.

Apple promises that Snow Leopard frees about 7GB from a comparable Leopard installation. This left me a bit puzzled. With X11 unchecked, but with the foreign language fonts installed, a clean install took up a shade over 10GB. Apple’s system requirement is 5GB of free space.

Nevertheless, there’s some serious shrinkage going on. Safari’s public beta on Leopard weighs in at 45MB, but the Snow Leopard Safari at just 14MB. The Address Book shrinks from 58MB to 15MB. Mail is now 77.5MB.

Can’t wait to snag it when it comes out on the 28th. I’m looking forward to some additional speed along with some hard disk space being freed up.

Most of the time my macs are fairly speedy but you can never have enough speed. Anything that makes them zippier and helps me get more done is appreciated. Snow Leopard looks like it’s going to be a great upgrade and the price isn’t bad either. I can handle $29 no problem for an upgrade.

Too bad about the non-Intel macs though. My mom has one and it could use an upgrade. Oh well though, at some point Apple was going to stop including them and I guess we’ve reached that point. Her mac still works fine though and will continue to for the rest of its computing life. So no worries.

What’s your take on Snow Leopard? Are you going to upgrade?

I have very mixed feelings about this:

The Linux Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth of the Linux kernel, is today announcing an affinity Visa Platinum credit card for people who want to contribute to advancing the OS through the organization’s initiatives. Reading the press release announcing the new credit card made me raise my eyebrows, but after giving it a bit of thought I think that this is actually not that bad an idea.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation in a statement says people can contribute to Linux in a variety of ways (writing code, marketing, etc.) but now have a convenient way of identifying themselves as supporters of the community “by carrying Tux in their pocket”. And then of course there’s the financial incentive.

The Linux Foundation is partnering with CardPartner to offer the credit card through UMB Bank. The organization will receive $50 for every activated card as well as a percentage of every purchase made with the credit card. The Linux Foundation also says 100% of the proceeds from the Visa card program will go directly towards providing community technical events and travel grants for open source community members in order to accelerate Linux innovation.

I totally understand the need to generate a revenue stream and how that can be beneficial for the Linux Foundation but credit cards are so nasty and can get people into so much trouble. Look at where our economy is right now and how many people are so far into debt. It’s very sad.

Yes, I know that not everybody who has a credit card gets into debt but many do. And how does a Linux credit card square with the principles of the Linux movement? I really don’t know. It seems kind of contradictory to me actually, to a certain degree.

Yes, there is definitely a coolness factor in having Tux on your credit card. But I hate the idea of people possibly going into debt even if the cause is noble.

If you get one of these Linux credit cards please be sure to be careful in how you use it. Don’t get yourself into debt or otherwise make purchases you don’t really need or can’t afford. The Linux Foundation will be fine without you going into debt.

If you are looking for Loyd Case from ExtremeTech, he has a brand new blog up:

http://www.improbableinsights.com/

Please drop by and say hello by posting a comment or two. It’s great to see Loyd writing again.

The Community Manager survey results are in.

72 community managers responded to Kommein’s request. The results were quite interesting as I know many of us have been curious about items such as community manager’s pay and where they fit in with their companies. This blog post is revealing the responses to about half of the questions asked. The rest will be discussed in various standalone posts in the future.

Please add your thoughts and comments!

Well, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Behold, the results of Kommein’s Community Manager

Some of them don’t surprise me at all. I’ve been doing the CM thing for about 15 years so I’ve had to deal with management that wouldn’t listen or didn’t care about their own communities.

And, as I mentioned in one of my comments on that site, it’s a foolish company that hands off the role of CM to interns. I have nothing against interns but would you want someone with no experience representing your company publicly on forums, blogs or social media networks? Oh my goodness…not a good idea. I recently interviewed with a recruiter for a very large and well known company who had done just that – put interns in charge of their community management tasks – and then regretted it when the performance of the interns was…er…not good at all.

Good community managers are well worth paying for and companies that don’t will end up regretting it later on as this one did. You truly do get what you pay for when it comes to online community management. Make the wrong decision and you could end up damaging your brand, angering your customers or flat out driving away potential new business.

Anyway, check out the results. There’s some interesting stuff there.

Well it strikes me as way too little, way too late:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

I guess it’s good that they are finally realizing what a disastrous thing this has been for the Kindle and for Amazon as a whole. I wish that I could very easily put this aside but I just can’t get past the creepiness of Amazon being able to remove my ebooks from my Kindle whenever it decides to or, even worse, perhaps replacing my ebooks with a different version without my knowledge.

Amazon has a HUGE amount of work to do in order to convince people that they can be trusted again. This was one of the most egregious violations of customer trust I’ve ever seen and there are a lot of us who really liked the Kindle who Amazon is still going to have to convince.

There needs to be concrete steps taken by Amazon and other publishers to acknowledge that once an ebook is purchased IT BELONGS TO THE USER NOT TO THE PUBLISHER OR TO THE COMPANY WHO SOLD THE EBOOK. No company should EVER have the ability to arbitrarily remove or edit an ebook once it has been purchased. Ever.

Until Amazon comes up with some kind of mechanism that guarantees that the purchaser of an ebook truly owns it, I doubt that they will be successful in repairing their tattered reputation.

Frankly, at this point, I will be sticking with ebooks published in open standards that I can control and use on any device. The DRM used in the Kindle books and the fact they are only available through Amazon (and the fact that Amazon can remove or edit them whenver it wants) creeps me out totally at this point. And I won’t spend another dime on buying books for my Kindle.

Well I’m sure by now you’ve probably heard about Amazon deleting certain books off of people’s Kindles without the permission of the Kindle owner:

Amazon.com shocked customers yesterday when it reached out to hundreds, if not thousands of Kindles and simply deleted texts that users had not only purchased, but had started to read. A literary coitus interruptus, Amazon spoiled the readers’ descent into Orwellian masochism with nary a warning or apology.

Sometime on Thursday, users had an eerie feeling that they were being watched, receiving emails stating that their purchases were being refunded. When they connected to the Kindle’s WhisperNet, the purchases in question were automatically deleted. Some could only wonder: how often could this happen? Perhaps the Thought Police Amazon Customer Service team could cut off your books whenever they wanted to.

I’ve been a big believer in the Kindle, having enjoyed the immediacy of downloading my favorite books and taking them with me anywhere. I really liked the product. But I’ve decided not to purchase any more Kindle books from Amazon.com. They simply cannot be trusted not to take the books back whenever they want.

Now I’ll grant you that Amazon refunded the payments for the books they deleted. Okay, so the customers got their money back. But once a sale has been made Amazon should NOT be able to touch those books without your permission. Under no circumstances should Amazon have the power to delete books from people’s Kindles without the explicit permission of the owner of the Kindle.

There are many lessons in this for all of us. Trusting one company like Amazon to do the right thing clearly doesn’t work. Proprietary ebook formats like Amazon’s that can so easily be abused by the company that controls them are a danger to us all. Many have warned about the dangers of DRM and digital content and now we see a horrific example of the abuse of that power by the company that controls the DRM in its products.

And what will be the end result of all of this? Well I think many people will be less inclined to buy Kindles for sure. And current Kindle owners like myself may stop buying ebooks from Amazon. But I also think that this will probably push people into pirating ebooks from places like the Pirate Bay or at the very least might mean that people only buy ebooks in open formats such as epub for devices that do not allow the device manufacturer to simply go into the device and remove whatever books they want, when they want.

Tim O’Reilly talked about the importance of open ebook formats and this awful behavior by Amazon.com only underscores what he was talking about in this article:

So it was with a feeling of deja vu that I listened in mid-2007 to the promises of Amazon about the potential of its new proprietary e-book platform. While no payment is required to participate, there are clearly onerous restrictions that could limit the growth of the market: a proprietary file format, and the requirement that the e-books only be sold by Amazon.com.

The file format was a problem for us from the get-go: Amazon’s Kindle file format doesn’t provide support for tables or for so-called monospaced fonts, two formatting features that we use heavily in our line of technical books. And there is a viable alternative: Epub, the open format from the International Digital Publishing Forum, is based on the Web’s native format, HTML, and provides full table and font support. This is the first “strategy tax” paid by those who embrace proprietary platforms: They can’t support the needs of every niche and must prioritize their support for mainstream needs.

The single point of purchase was also a non-starter for us, since my fundamental understanding of information marketplaces is that they grow bigger and more lucrative for everyone when there is a rich ecosystem of cooperating players. (Here’s the text of a talk I gave on that subject back in 2000.)

History has already begun to repeat itself.

We’ve thrown our support behind epub and other open e-book standards, providing our books as “e-book bundles” that give the reader the choice of pdf (still the only viable choice for many highly formatted books like our Head First series of “brain friendly” tutorials that even HTML can’t handle), epub, and mobi, an HTML-based predecessor to the Kindle format that lacks digital rights management but that can be imported into the Kindle. To help jump-start the market, we’re hosting and supporting the free bookworm e-book reader.

Despite Amazon’s claims that they are changing their system so that this doesn’t happen again, I’m not buying it. I will be buying paper books from now on for the most part and if I buy an ebook it will be in an open format and not Amazons proprietary format. I will also be looking for an alternative ebook device and will eventually be phasing out my Kindle. I don’t want to own an ebook reader that allows the manufacturer to clandestinely delete all of my books with no warning and without my permission.

No thank you, Amazon. You had your chance with your proprietary format and you blew it. We trusted you and you violated our trust and you’ll never have that trust again. And neither will any other company. From now on it’s open formats only on devices that don’t allow you or anybody else to take our digital content without our permission.

Shame on you, Amazon.com.

Exciting news for computer users, I hope I can get a copy of this for a review at some point on DLR.

It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Steve Jobs once said something about the difficulty in a company managing two operating systems. I wonder how Google will manage Chrome OS and Android? I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see but it’s surely an exciting announcement. I can’t wait to see what Google Chrome OS looks like.

Of course this isn’t going to make it any easier for regular Linux distros to gain share on netbooks. Which is too bad really. Although I don’t own a netbook, I liked the idea of them perhaps giving Linux more market share than it’s been able to achieve in the past. Since Google Chrome OS will apparently run on a Linux kernel it’s still a good thing for Linux but some of the other Linux players in the netbook space are going to get squeezed out probably.

Maximum PC has a great article about Linux desktop customization:

The days of ugly Linux desktops are a thing of the past. Modern distros include many tools and options that enable them to look good and be more useful.

Unlike Windows, Linux has several different widget toolkits. The most well-known widget engines are GTK+, (distributed with GNOME) and QT. (pronounced “cute”) Widgets are the various elements which make up a program’s GUI: scrollbars, arrows, checkboxes, etc. However, take note that QT or GTK widgets are not the same thing as desktop widgets.

Widgets and other things like window chrome (the toolbars, panels, etc. of a programs interface) and window decoration (the window’s title bar, minimize/maximize/close buttons, and the window border) are the various elements that, when joined together, create a theme for QT or GTK. It is possible to modify the various themes in Linux to change how they look or even create your own. This article will address the various resources that are out there to help make your desktop look its best and help you get the most out of it.

This is one of those articles that I read and then think to myself “damn, I wish I’d written that!” Good job, Will Kraft.

One of the problems with desktop Linux is that it can be confusing to those coming over from Windows but Will has artfully covered how easy and fun it can be to take a Linux desktop and turn it into whatever you want it to be. For Windows users new to Linux this article is a great resource.

Check it out.

I think these tips are pretty much right on about how to ease the transition for users from Windows to Linux:

Moving users to Linux can be tricky, but Jack Wallen has some practical measures that should ease the transition.

Sheer economics are making the use of the Linux operating system increasingly widespread. It is free, reliable and safe. But when adopting any new operating system, users always have a lot to learn.

On top of that, many users think Linux is hard to use, which is, of course, not necessarily true. But it is your job to overcome their reluctance and train them to use Linux so it becomes second nature, and so they are just as at-ease with it as they are with Windows.

Without sending users on some sort of boot camp, changing the preconceptions of users may seem a daunting task. But there are ways to ease the pain of learning Linux.

1. Standardise on a Windows-like desktop

2. Get users familiar with applications before you switch

3. Choose the right distribution

4. Have a machine up and running for users to play with

5. Remove administrative menu entries

6. Adopt Adept

7. Offer printed materials

8. Make screen casts of more difficult tasks

9. Encourage the use of Linux-based forums and mailing lists

10. Have an installfest

Be sure to read the article to see the details of the list. Definitely food for thought for folks looking to migrate from Windows to Linux. Thinking ahead, planning carefully and anticipating potential problems can really work wonders at your company as you move away from Windows and over to Linux.