ctrl.altered.mind

A dear friend just emailed me an excellent (and very creative) slideshow, which chronicles some capers his fiance and he have shared in recent years. This presentation also doubles as an invitation - they are getting married by the end of this month (congratulations!!). Sadly, I won’t be able to make it to the wedding that will be taking place halfway around the planet (I’ll get my dinner treat later for sure!). I’d have loved to post this awesome presentation here online, but I’m pretty certain it comes to me accompanied by limited copyright.

Onto the technical part of this blog post (oh yeah, there is always one, isn’t there!)- the slideshow file that I received (in the PowerPoint Show, or .pps format) is not natively playable by StarOffice. While it is one of the better open source application suites available today, StarOffice does fall short in cases such as this one. Fortunately, Microsoft has been graceful enough to offer standalone viewer programs (on Windows) that can handle Microsoft Office formats - not only for PowerPoint (2007), but also for Word (2003) and Excel (2003). There is also a compatibility pack available, which enables MSO 2003 viewer programs to handle MSO 2007 file formats.

By the way, if you have not heard of (or recently taken a look at) Sun’s StarOffice or its parent, OpenOffice, please do. They are excellent substitutes for Microsoft’s commercial Office suite, and have equivalent programs that look and feel almost the same. They can also handle about ninety percent of the functions that the average user requires from their productivity applications suite. Of course, both come at the low, low price of $0.00. StarOffice is also offered via the Google Pack, a convenient package manager tool. For the Mac platform, there is a derivative of OpenOffice available in the form of NeoOffice (with a full Aqua interface).

Now, if only Microsoft gratuitously extended this service for Microsoft Project files, I’d be a happy camper (sigh).

Open Source Mac is a simple list of free, open-source software for Mac OS X. It is not a comprehensive list, but a good point for OS X newbies to start looking for a popular and easy-to-use open source program.

FreeSmug.org, on the other hand, is a comprehensive resource. Alternatively, IUseThis.com adds a social aspect to program listings by letting you see how popular (or not) a program is.

For Windows, check out Open Source Windows. Don’t forget to get the PC Decrapifier if you just got yourself a branded computer that’s been treated more like a billboard than a personal computing device.

Google recently announced a new contest that should, among other things (like quantify the Sketchup geek quotient across campuses nationwide), generate significant and useful content for use with Google Earth.

The contest requires its participants to map and build a 3D model of their respective college campuses, that would show up in Google Earth, of course.

Google Sketchup is a software tool that lets you build 3D models rapidly, and is remarkably simple to use (without compromising on features and the level of desired complexity). Its ease of integration with Google Earth needs no mention (and yes, Sketchup is also available as a Mac universal binary app).

What caught my eye was the sample picture used on the webpage announcing the contest. It looked strongly familiar. Where have I seen that building.. oh yes, its the Duane Physics building! Google has featured the University of Colorado at Boulder campus. Yippee!
A little more digging shone light on the fact that the CU campus is actually one of the more detailed and well-mapped virtual campuses on Google Earth, and most of its models are displayed in amazing detail in the Sketchup 3D Warehouse.

Build Your Campus in 3D Competition

A few weeks back, the tech community forums were abuzz with the news about Kerala, India’s most literate state, having chalked out a plan to migrate all of its high school students to open source platforms over the next three years. While the computer market in India harbors its own sub-industry of software piracy, the prime reason for this is the fact that bloated software prices have been taking a toll on most consumer budgets. It is, after all, hard to justify paying a price for intangible software that rivals the cost of the hardware itself. The good news about the planned move to open source software, is the fact that budgets of educational institutions would not be blasted out of proportion by high licensing and technical support fees. The savings could be applied towards purchasing additional hardware (as an example, the Cotton Hill Girls High School in the southern city of Tiruvananthapuram has 4000 students and just 21 computers).

On slashdot today, slashchris84 mentions a BusinessWeek article about the growing role of Linux in the classrooms of India.

Amidst the sea of comments, those of humphrm (18130) particularly stand out:

There is another angle, though. Maybe you dismiss it, but to some India is one of the hottest technical development centers in the world. And this is a country that highly values education and generally does a better job of providing it to even it’s poorest constituents than the “Developed Countries”. Having just returned from Hyderabad, I witnessed kids crawling out of what could only be described by a Westerner as a mud hut, with a sparkling clean and pressed school uniform on, ready to go to school. In America, these kids would probably not qualify for most public schools because they don’t have an address.

Then, they go on to higher education… and guess what schools are being built fast in India? Technical schools. Lots of them.

My point is, your “backwater” country is doing a better job of educating it’s masses than most western countries, and the tools that these kids learn today will shape technology tomorrow.

MadPenguin.org has a report on Suse’s new Enterprise Desktop 10, and reviewer Adam Doxtater is convinced that Suse has a winner on their hands, with what could be the most impressive distribution released ever. Suse already holds that distinction with Suse Linux 10.1, which is currently ranked second-best (with Ubuntu on top). Just reading the feature list for the new SLED 10 has me convinced as well, and this is one release I will be really waiting for.

SLED 10 is a stellar release and Suse’s attention to detail is praiseworthy (as the article mentions, for example, the desktop reflects the color of the ipod thats plugged into the system, even after hot-swapping black and white ipods). The biggest (and most prominent) change is the desktop switch, with Suse moving away from their KDE-centricity and defaulting to GNOME this time.

While SLED 10 may not be a Vista-killer in the true sense of the term - although its only a matter of time before Windows stagnates into oblivion, unless Microsoft can get its act together and revamp from the ground up. The industry is already going as far as calling the unreleased Windows Vista operating system a ‘Windows Me 2.0′, the most bloated Windows release of all time (they’ve moved from CDs to DVDs now), with features that just about bring the beast on par with OS X (Tiger, not even Leopard) and other popular linux distributions.

Link to the article (a highly recommended read), with installation and interface screencasts (the article has links to more).

Google has released ctemplate, or a template form of the code that formats the pages returned in a Google web search. “The ctemplate package contains a library implementing a simple but powerful template language for C++. It emphasizes separating logic from presentation: it is impossible to embed application logic in this template language.” Skins for programs? Amazing concept, only Google could do this.

I need some candy for my wrappers.

Note: If gcc 4 does not compile happily, try gcc 3.3.

SourceForge link for source and RPMs

(From the Google Code Blog, Digg)

After hearing about Bubbles, a new app that attempts to bridge the great browser divide separating Web 2.0 from the desktop, on Om Malik’s blog, I thought I’d give it a try.

Bubbles is a nice and simple attempt (by Ohar Eder-Pressman and friends in Israel), and allows developers to customize their web applications via javascript APIs - therefore allowing the bridge to be crossed both ways. The AJAX engine can also be used to write tiny JS applications for the client side, which probably might be a lot more useful for me than the basic concept of Bubbles itself. Thanks to some quick tweaking via AutoPatcher XP, I can set individual browser windows to operate like standalone applications, with basic system tray functionality.

The Bubbles web site could use some quick spelling correction though.

3D3R Bubbles

Have you taken a long hard look at Apple’s Front Row application for OS X and wished for a similar utility on Windows? While Front Row-like capability forms the cornerstone of Microsoft’s Windows Media Center Edition, switching operating systems for the purpose is ridiculous. And pointless, now that Team Mediaportal is out with their latest test release, 0.2. Mediaportal has added amazing functionality to their Media Portal software, a fantastic, skinnable interface that consolidates your music, photos, videos, and more. Media Portal works with a Windows-capable remote (if you have one), or a keyboard/mouse will work just fine. Added bonuses (over Front Row) are an option for cable TV, weather, and tetris. Did I mention Media Portal is open source? Yes, setting up the libraries may be a one-time job (especially if your media is all over the place!), but the application is pretty sweet once its up and running. Be sure to take a look at the keyboard shortcuts since they can be quite handy.

MediaPortal - the Open Source Mediacenter!

After the beta release in December, the SeaMonkey Council has announced SeaMonkey 1.0, the first end-user release of their internet suite. This open source application features a state-of-the-art web browser and powerful email client, as well as a WYSIWYG web page composer and a feature-rich IRC chat client. For web developers, mozilla.org’s DOM inspector and JavaScript debugger tools are included as well. SeaMonkey 1.0 is claimed to be one of the most complete, powerful, and secure internet software packages available today. Do you need this if all you do is surf the web and check mail? Probably not, you’re better off with Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

SeaMonkey News

Download Seamonkey 1.0

There’s an update to the spicy rumor about Google’s next big thing. The story is that a new OS designed by Google (originally for internal use) will be hitting the marketplace soon, as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. While this is old news, the twist is that this unnamed OS now has a title - Goobuntu! As the name hints, this OS is supposedly developed by Google based on Ubuntu Linux (which is great) and the Gnome desktop.

Goobuntu: coming soon to a desktop near you? - Engadget