This Friday, February 15, I’m scheduled for a ceremony in which I will take the oath of citizenship for the United Kingdom. That’s right — I’m going to be a Canadian, an American, and a Brit!
Next stop: knighthood.
PC World is running my latest article in its Business Center this week. In it, I survey a collection of open source applications for small businesses, with two distinctions: First, all of these applications are mature enough for anyone to download and try out, without any arcane tweaking or configuration. And second, all of them run on Windows.
Longtime readers will be aware that I’m a desktop Linux fan, and I try to use Linux for my day-to-day computing as much as possible. But the media tends to place so much emphasis on the Linux operating system that people sometimes forget that what really matter are the applications.
The truth is that you don’t have to give up your mainstream OS to use some of the best free software that’s available. If you’re friendly to open source, but aren’t yet ready to make the leap to Linux full-time, check out this piece and try out some of the great applications that the community has to offer.
Yesterday, Jon Gordon interviewed me for his radio program, “Future Tense,” regarding the top tech flops article I mentioned earlier. “Future Tense” is a 5-minute daily program that airs on National Public Radio on about 100 stations across the country. I think you can usually hear it as a segment during the CBC radio show “As it Happens.”
If you missed the show yesterday — or for some reason you don’t listen to NPR — you can hear the interview via streaming audio in RealAudio, MP3, and iTunes podcast formats.
We’re having some fun over at InfoWorld today. The end of the year typically sees a proliferation of stories predicting what lies ahead for the tech industry. Instead, with the New Year well underway, we’re taking a look back. Presented for your enjoyment are 25 of tech’s biggest blunders, slip-ups, disappointments, and missed opportunities — the moments that, if anyone could have seen the future, would probably have been done differently.
There’s an element of schadenfreude in this, to be sure. But it’s not just about kicking the players when they’re down. I think of it as a moment to chuckle at our own irrational exuberance and, if we’re lucky, an opportunity to learn from past mistakes.
You guys might have some other doozies that didn’t make my list. Feel free to send them my way, or post them over at InfoWorld.com. And smile, everybody! After all, what’s a few million in venture capital funding down the drain?
There have been rumors about an initial public offering for MySQL AB, the company that makes the open source database MySQL, for some time now. Estimates placed the initial valuation as high as $1 billion. But it looks like Mårten Mickos and company won’t need to bother anymore — they got bought by Sun Microsystems instead! And at their top asking price, to boot.
My full analysis of Sun’s $1 billion acquisition of MySQL is up now for your reading pleasure at InfoWorld.com. The piece has already gotten its fair share of attention — it was the top story on Google Sci/Tech News today — but unfortunately, the curse of InfoWorld is that popular news sources tend to link to the stories when they’re syndicated by InfoWorld’s larger sister publications at IDG. This time, most of the hits seem to be going to PCWorld. But just remember, it was InfoWorld that made this story happen and this type of enterprise tech industry coverage is what InfoWorld does best. So look there first!
Hi there! I just realized that it’s been a while since I’ve posted any updates to this blog. The holiday season got on top of me for a while there. But welcome, all, to 2008!
I should have some new work out there soon to tell you about, and a little more just getting in the works.
One thing that I’m looking forward to is getting a chance to fool around with the OLPC hardware. InfoWorld should be getting me an evaluation device sometime in the coming week. So if anyone out there has one of these yourself (perhaps through the give-one-get-one program of December) or you have a specific question about it that you’d like answered, drop me a line.
Otherwise, I hope to post a little more frequently as the year gets underway, including new book reviews and other stuff as well. Bear with me and watch this space.
It’s interesting to watch William Gibson’s efforts to reinvent the cyberpunk genre, even if they’re not always rewarding. The problem, of course, is that nothing dates faster than a book about the near future. (Gibson himself has pointed out that no one in Neuromancer has a cell phone.) By bringing his setting closer and closer to the present day, he can stick to writing what he knows while still giving it a touch of his patented futurist color.
This is a fine enough idea, but unfortunately Gibson’s execution lacks whatever spark might make it work in practice. His own personal zeitgeist is just a little too eager, a little too agog with the possibilities of modern technology for my tastes. He has a bad habit of repeating himself, going over and over the same old ideas. And worst of all, in the case of Spook Country, he’s not above delivering a dull, flat little book. » More... »
No real plans … I’ll probably dress up as the Crimson Ghost.
You just don’t get to see enough Danzig these days, ever since he’s been semi-retired from touring. Just in time for Halloween, he’ll make a stop in Frisco along with Gorgeous Frankenstein, the new band featuring Doyle from the Misfits on guitar. Hopefully that means he’ll do a repeat of the Misfits set he played last time I saw him.
My latest set of articles is a how-to guide for newbies interested in switching from Windows to Linux. In a few short pieces I walk you through the process of installing a dual-boot system, talk about how to get multimedia and some of the cooler graphic effects working, and point out some of the major applications. » More... »