I must say, I'm surprised at how well Easierbuntu is doing. I checked my Feedburner dashboard and the subscriber numbers currently stands at 45, compared to 10 for Far Beyond the Edge of Reason. That does make sense though - Easierbuntu is a useful resource, whereas Far Beyond the Edge of Reason is more of a personal blog about issues I'm interested in.
But I'm really pleased with how well it's doing. A lot of people seem to have picked up on it after I submitted the first post to Digg, and it's been mentioned on Productive Linux and Fresh Ubuntu, which seems to have helped reader figures somewhat. Many thanks to them for their publicity, which has gone a long way to help it gain readership.
I'm glad that people are reading it and seem to be finding it useful. Ideally, I'd like to get more people involved in writing for it so it can provide more help to people. But with the things I've provided so far, I think it has gone quite some way to help new Ubuntu users who might be struggling to get it working for them.
Now let's see if I can keep up the momentum!
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
How to create your own virtual self
How weird is this? You can create your own chatbot based on your own personality, and you can embed it on web pages, MySpace profiles or a blog. It can chat with people via MSN, or can even appear in Second Life! I'm going to give this a try and see what I think!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Monday, 28 January 2008
People don't read books - says Steve Jobs
Maybe he means Mac users don't read books, which if it is true says very little for their intelligence! Sorry, couldn't resist a little swipe! Anyway, if Steve Jobs thinks people don't read books anymore, then he's an idiot - Amazon is one of the big survivors of the first dotcom bubble, in the last few years there have been loads of popular books (Harry Potter series, Da Vinci Code, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), and bookshops are doing pretty well. Where exactly does he get this idea?
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Friday, 25 January 2008
28 Wrong Ways & 28 Right Ways to Care For a New Baby
Who'd have thought an article about caring for a new baby could be so funny! Honestly, check it out, it really is side-splittingly funny!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Jook: Social Networking Meets Music
This sounds very interesting. Jook is a wireless technology which allows you to broadcast music played on your digital music player to other people with it in the vicinity. They can listen to what you're listening to, so you can share music with friends (or complete strangers). If they could integrate it with Last.fm, that would be something!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Last.fm frees the music
After so much press about Internet radio services like Pandora having problems, and record companies threatening to sue people for downloading music, my perennial favourite Last.fm is flourishing! Furthermore, they've actually managed to put together a rock-solid business model that means that both artists and fans get a really great deal. This announcement is tremendously exciting!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
E-mail subscriptions now available
Just a quick post to say that both easierbuntu and Far Beyond the Edge of Reason now offer subscription via e-mail. I realised that unfortunately a lot of people haven't really woken up to how useful and powerful RSS feeds are, and don't know how to use them, so offering subscription via e-mail as well is a good idea. Also, easierbuntu in particular might be better suited to that, because it's useful to have a copy of any posts available in your inbox at any time, whereas if you subscribe to the feed you don't usually have the old posts available. It'll be interesting to see if subscriber numbers for either blog increase as a result.
But, seriously people, if you haven't discovered the convenience of RSS, do yourselves a favour and sign up for Google Reader, and start subscribing to the feeds instead of checking the same websites all the time. You really can get through a tremendous amount of stuff in a short period of time. It's just about the best way to keep tabs on what's going on! I'm subscribed to a hell of a lot of feeds, and it means I can stay informed on a range of subjects.
But, seriously people, if you haven't discovered the convenience of RSS, do yourselves a favour and sign up for Google Reader, and start subscribing to the feeds instead of checking the same websites all the time. You really can get through a tremendous amount of stuff in a short period of time. It's just about the best way to keep tabs on what's going on! I'm subscribed to a hell of a lot of feeds, and it means I can stay informed on a range of subjects.
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Fasterfox
Why oh why didn't I try Fasterfox before - it's brilliant! I've known Firefox to be quite slow in Kubuntu, especially on sites with lots of JavaScript like Digg or the Ubuntu Forums, but Fasterfox makes a tremendous difference. If you're running Firefox and you haven't tried it, get it now!
Another anti-piracy spoof!
While looking on YouTube for the video for the previous post, I also found this one. It's got a pretty good point - if you're watching a legitimate DVD you have to sit through that and generally can't fast foward or skip it, but get it via BitTorrent or buy a pirated DVD you don't see it. No wonder the entertainment industry is in the toilet...
The IT Crowd - the spoof Anti-Piracy Ad!
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Top Ten Tips For New Ubuntu Users
A useful resource for new Ubuntu users, but with several glaring omissions - it tells you how to change your default text editor to Vim, but doesn't mention that the full version isn't installed in Ubuntu by default - it uses Vim-tiny, you really need to install the vim-full package. And are newbies really that likely to want to compile from source or install a new kernel?
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Facebook Fatigue - Part 3
Here's something someone sent me on Facebook today:
Hello, my name is Medwin and I suffer from guilt for not forwarding 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe, if you send them on, a poor six-year-old girl in Scotland with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her to a travelling freak show.
And, do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give $1000 to you, and everyone to whom you send 'his' email?
How stupid are we?
Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll get laid by a model I just happen to run into the next day!
What a bunch of bullshit.
Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and sodomise me in my sleep for not continuing a chain letter that was started by St Peter in 5AD and brought to this country by midget pilgrim stowaways on the Endeavour.
Fuck 'em!!
If you're going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing.
I've seen all the 'send this to 10 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being' forwards about 90 times. I don't fucking care.
Show a little intelligence and think about what you're actually contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it's our own unpopularity.
The point being?
If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it.
If it's funny, send it on.
Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been tied to the arse of a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents per letter he'll receive if you forward this email.
Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow morning your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume your genitals.
Have a nice day.
Ps Send me £20.00 then fuck off
I couldn't agree more! I'm hoping these stupid chain letters will eventually die out, and I'm very glad to see other people are getting as annoyed about them as I am!
Hello, my name is Medwin and I suffer from guilt for not forwarding 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe, if you send them on, a poor six-year-old girl in Scotland with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her to a travelling freak show.
And, do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give $1000 to you, and everyone to whom you send 'his' email?
How stupid are we?
Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll get laid by a model I just happen to run into the next day!
What a bunch of bullshit.
Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and sodomise me in my sleep for not continuing a chain letter that was started by St Peter in 5AD and brought to this country by midget pilgrim stowaways on the Endeavour.
Fuck 'em!!
If you're going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing.
I've seen all the 'send this to 10 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being' forwards about 90 times. I don't fucking care.
Show a little intelligence and think about what you're actually contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it's our own unpopularity.
The point being?
If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it.
If it's funny, send it on.
Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been tied to the arse of a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents per letter he'll receive if you forward this email.
Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow morning your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume your genitals.
Have a nice day.
Ps Send me £20.00 then fuck off
I couldn't agree more! I'm hoping these stupid chain letters will eventually die out, and I'm very glad to see other people are getting as annoyed about them as I am!
Facebook Fatigue - Part 2
Either it's a coincidence, or someone at Facebook read my blog post about Facebook Fatigue. Remember I said this?
Because I just logged in and it asked if I wanted to move a load of my applications to my extended profile! Naturally, I said yes, and my profile now loads a lot quicker.
Thank you, Facebook. I don't know if that feature's always been there and I've just not known about it before, or it's a recent addition, but it has gone a long way in restoring my faith in it. I do wish that people would stop sending round those chain wall posts, though!
Why can't they add a feature that will automatically ask if you want to remove an application if you haven't used it for a time?
Because I just logged in and it asked if I wanted to move a load of my applications to my extended profile! Naturally, I said yes, and my profile now loads a lot quicker.
Thank you, Facebook. I don't know if that feature's always been there and I've just not known about it before, or it's a recent addition, but it has gone a long way in restoring my faith in it. I do wish that people would stop sending round those chain wall posts, though!
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
The MacBook Air - WTF?
Regular readers will know I am most certainly not a Mac fanboy - I get very annoyed with the trolls who spam every Digg article about Linux with "Get a Mac", and I'm quite proud of being a Linux user. That said, I don't have anything against people using Macs. OS X is quite a good OS, although I do not like the desktop - I'm very much a KDE man. I merely think they are overpriced fashion accessories. Next time I buy a laptop, assuming it's not an Eee PC, Cloudbook or Noahpad, I'm going for a Dell with preinstalled Ubuntu - my current Dell runs Kubuntu Gutsy really well, and has been going strong for three-and-a-half years.
I thought from what I had heard that the MacBook Air was going to be something along the lines of the Eee PC, but no. Instead it's a normal, expensive laptop that's so thin it fits in an envelope. And has no optical drive or Ethernet cable. Oh, big wow. For the price I could get four Eee PC's, which are more robust and more practical.
Yet the Apple faithful are crowing about it, saying "It's revolutionary! Everyone else will be doing this soon!". How is that revolutionary? It might be light, but it looks fragile and it's less portable than an Eee - you could put it in a briefcase, but not much else, whereas an Eee you can put in pretty much anything, and is more easily replaceable.
I'm not surprised Apple's share price dropped after this. I really doubt anyone else is going to try and emulate this, despite what the fanboys say. I think the future is in things like the Eee PC, and the MacBook Air is something of a white elephant. There will be people buy it (those with more money than sense), but you won't see anyone trying to emulate it, except maybe Sony, and VAIO's are going after the same market. By contrast, vendors are lining up to emulate the Eee PC. I heard rumours today that Acer are planning their own entry into the subnotebook market.
I thought from what I had heard that the MacBook Air was going to be something along the lines of the Eee PC, but no. Instead it's a normal, expensive laptop that's so thin it fits in an envelope. And has no optical drive or Ethernet cable. Oh, big wow. For the price I could get four Eee PC's, which are more robust and more practical.
Yet the Apple faithful are crowing about it, saying "It's revolutionary! Everyone else will be doing this soon!". How is that revolutionary? It might be light, but it looks fragile and it's less portable than an Eee - you could put it in a briefcase, but not much else, whereas an Eee you can put in pretty much anything, and is more easily replaceable.
I'm not surprised Apple's share price dropped after this. I really doubt anyone else is going to try and emulate this, despite what the fanboys say. I think the future is in things like the Eee PC, and the MacBook Air is something of a white elephant. There will be people buy it (those with more money than sense), but you won't see anyone trying to emulate it, except maybe Sony, and VAIO's are going after the same market. By contrast, vendors are lining up to emulate the Eee PC. I heard rumours today that Acer are planning their own entry into the subnotebook market.
Spicebird
Have tried a very promising new application today. Spicebird is based on Mozilla Thunderbird, but aims to be a completely integrated application for email, instant messaging, calendar, RSS reader and eventually desktop blogging application. It has real potential, and if a .deb package for Ubuntu becomes available I might try it instead of Thunderbird (long my fave application for e-mail).
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