• Ubuntu
• Kubuntu
• OpenSuse
• DSL (Damn Small Linux)
• Knoppix

And more.

As you can see, by my old posts, showing shots of my Ubuntu Desktop, I have tried to use Linux as my main operating system. Yes, for some people, it does work. But, there are a few bugs that make it not ready. The one bug I’m relating too is playing songs while on the web. With a webpage loaded like Youtube, using flash and sound. It just wont play the sound. I’m guessing that there is a simple solution to this, by going into the terminal, sudo your way to files. And then editing a text file, maybe just changing a 0 to a 1. I’m a power user, but all I want to do is what I do. I don’t want to have to research into this problem, and them fix it. I want it to just work.

Also, as I’m going into sixth form and I have took I.C.T., I will be using Microsoft Access at school. As I will be making databases. Now, yes I Could use OpenOffice.Org Bases (I think its called that). But, it wont open Microsoft Access Files. And I have to use that file format so that my teacher can go through it at school, and at home to review and mark it.

I know that this is because its not a open file format. But I don’t care. Most databases use this format, and so must I.

Other than that, Ubuntu is a great operating system. I love it. If them two problems could be fixed. I wouldn’t think twice as using that as my main operating system. I really want to.

Conclusion

But, for now. I will only be using this either in a virtual box. Or dual boot. I don’t have it installed at the moment, as I have been having another problem with Firefox, which will be in another blog post.

Do you use Linux. Why do you use it. How do you use it, in a virtual machine, dual boot. Or as your only operating system. Comment below, I would love to know what every one else’s views are on this topic.

1. Remember The Milk Addon for Gmail - This addon gives users the usability of both Gmail and RTM (Remember The Milk). All you have to do is go onto Gmail, and you see all your RTM Lists side by side. A must have for users of Gmail and RTM.
2. Google Redesigned - If you use Gmail and Google Calendar. Give yours a new look. It looks very nice. Try it for yourself.
3. Google Gears - This is becoming a must have, like Adobe Flash. This, makes it easy for you to use web applications while your offline. Great for when you are travelling. Only a few websites work with this, but these include RTM, Google Reader. There are rumours that Gmail and Google Calendar are also getting this.
4. Foxmarks - Do you use Firefox on multiple machines? If you do, you will have trouble keeping your bookmarks on all the machines. A easy way to keep them synchronised is using Foxmarks. Even if you only use one computer, you can use Foxmarks as a backup. Also, if you are using a public PC, e.g. at a Internet cafe, you can login to the site, and see your bookmarks, edit them, and add more. And whey you start Firefox at home, all you new/edited bookmarks will be changed, just like you did on the website.
5. ForecastFox - If you don’t get away from your computer allot. But want to see what the weather is like, or going to be like in the next few days. Then ForecastFox is a great extension. You can see upcoming weather, and see a radar view of the weather. Its very good.

One specifically for windows vista

Glasser - If you like how Internet Explorer gives you the Aero effect. But, miss it in Firefox. Well if you use this extension, then you can get the same aero effect.

So, if you use Firefox, What extensions do you use.

Thanks,

Danny

Why a mac?

Mac’s are built from the base, by Apple. Apple put everything together, the hardware, and the software. So there isn’t any issues, or shouldn’t be.

Design

I, will most likely get the Apple iMac, as it is a all in one PC. I’m sick and tired of going to the back of my computer desk to see lots of wires. All you need for the iMac is one cable, the power cable. Everything else, can be done wirelessly.

It comes with Bluetooth integrated. So the Apple wireless keyboard and wireless Mighty Mouse works perfectly out the box. Apple even configures them before you buy the iMac, so as soon as you turn it on, it just works.

The iMac is a very clean system, which Apple has took a lot of care, thought and attention in when making.

The Operating System

Apples OS X Leopard is an amazing operating system. It comes with nearly everything you need straight out the box. A very good mail application, calendar application etc. It also comes with iLife, a suite of tools. A good photo management/ editing suite. A movie program. A music program. You can also create brilliantly designed websites with it, easily.

iWorks seems to be also quite good from the reviews I have heard. This has a word processing application, spreadsheets program, and a presentation program. The templates for these programs are amazing. The detail in these templates are a lot like Apple product’s, simple, but elegant.

Also, all the applications i use on my computers can work on Mac’s.

What do you use? Windows Vista, Windows XP, A Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu), or a Mac. What are your views on a Mac. Do you think my next PC should be a Mac? Comment below.

I use a lot of web applications in my daily life, including Google Mail, Google Reader, Remember The Milk, Skype and Windows Live Messenger. These are just a few of the applications I use. As i am nearly always on the phone or on VOIP using Skype, I use these for my Job.

I have been without the Internet nearly all day now, and I am expecting a lot of emails, and a very late night tomorrow for myself catching up.

I use Remember The Milk to create tasks for each project, each with their own due date, and priority. Now, I’m going to have to do two days worth of tasks in a day.

But, its not all bad. As I couldn’t do my work, I took this time to do some other things, so not wasting any time.

A few things to do when you cant get on the Internet that i have done is the following:

• Clean up the house
• Clean up / Organise your computer(s).
• If it’s a nice day, go out with friends, take a day off.
• Do some things that don’t need the Internet, in my case. Creating things offline for a website i am building, e.g. Planning things, creating graphics.

What can you do?

To stop being as reliant on the Internet. I had set up my Google Mail account to, on one computer, download all the mail using POP3, and on my laptop, use IMAP.

If you use Google Doc’s. Use Google Gear’s. For now, you cannot create new documents using it. But, if you find yourself without a Internet connection, at least you can view your documents.  There is also rumours of Google Mail getting Google Gears.

Remember The Milk, can also use Google Gears.

Are you reliant on the Internet? Comment below on your views, and if you are reliant on the Internet, and if so, how?

cuil homepage by danisgood on Zooomr

So, after reading this, I decided to check it out. I decided to search for “Techy Dan”. And, while looking at the results, I did find some relevant things, like some blog posts from Lockergnome. But what I didn’t find was my domain - which I am very surprised about.

cuil search for techy dan by danisgood on Zooomr

I was pleased about the layout of the search results; it was a better interface than others like Google and Yahoo.

But, comparing results. When i did the same search, but on Google, I got this.

google search for techy dan by danisgood on Zooomr Google’s interface is a lot more plain and simple, in my opinion. It had my domain at the top of the results, with the Lockergnome blog second.

Cuil has been getting a lot of hype lately, being a “Google Rival”. Lately, though, some people reviewing this have said other things about it.

Here are other people’s opinions on Cuil. Make your own mind up about what you think of it.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2326741,00.asp

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cuil_good_but_not_good_enough.php

http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2008/07/28/cuil-not-so-cool/

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/search/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209901028

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/08/04/in_retrospect_the_pr_strategy_for_cuilcoms_launch_wasnt_so_cool/

So, what do you think of Cuil. Can you see yourself changing your default search engine to Cuil. Comment below, with your own views on this.

Thanks,

Danny

Also, I forgot to mention that when searching Cuil, it was very slow and I had to refresh the page to get my results.

Well lately, what’s happened with me? Well, I had my birthday last week and got a new laptop. And, with anything, a lot of hassle went into finding the right one. I was looking for a nice design, with a good specification. But also, with a reasonable price, as my parents were paying for it.

We ended up going to a town near us for a day out. And while browsing the shops, went in a Comet, and we started looking at laptops. There was a Toshiba laptop that I liked the look of, but only the box was there. We ended up asking a staff member if we could look at the laptop, and he rudely pointed at another Toshiba and said “It looks like that Toshiba there.” After finding another staff member, he kindly went through and got us the model, and it looked nothing like the other one. But by this time, we had seen a more expensive Acer computer. And it looked great. I don’t see what people’s problem are with the Gemstone range - the cream part doesn’t look ugly at all.

This laptop is an Acer 7720 model, with a 160 GB hard drive, and storage isn’t a problem  With my NAS, it also has 2 GB of RAM which I am thinking of upgrading to 3 GB in the future. It comes with an Intel Core Two Duo processor T5550 that runs at 1.83 GHz.

I love this laptop. It’s very easy to write on; I’m typing this on it now. I wasn’t at all worried about the keyboard, it even comes with a number pad. The 17″ screen is very bright, and very nice, and shows the niceness of Windows Vista’s Aero very good. It also runs Vista very quickly. The only bloatware I didn’t like was the Norton Internet Security 2008, but i uninstalled that and put the Norton 360 software we got with it on.

I may post some photos of it in all its glory on here later. I cannot at the moment, as the phone I use to take pictures (5 megapixels) is in repair, as it’s broke again. But if I remember too then I will.

Comment on this if you want.

Thanks,

Danny

I thought today I would share my experiences with KDE 3.5

Now I know most people find the easiest operating system the first one they use, well, not for me. When I first tried Linux, I used Knoppix, and liked the difference from the same old boring Windows XP I was used to, but I did not like KDE 3.5

I just installed Kubuntu 8.04 on my system, dual booting with Ubuntu (no I did not install the packages on my Ubuntu partition, I didn’t want to) and  to be quite honest, only messed around with it for the simple reason that I wanted to run Kontact. As I have a Gmail account, and when trying with evolution, it will not prompt for a password, and I don’t like Thunderbird. (that can be expressed in another post)

So, how long did I spend on the system…15 minutes maximum. Yes, I’m being serious. I couldn’t stand it. I kept finding bugs, and I didn’t like it.

I was first prompted by the hardware drivers program to install the Nvidia driver, so I did, expecting to have to restart my computer, but that didn’t prompt me too. So I unchecked and rechecked the box to install, to find it download the drivers again, and then prompt to restart, so I did.

Then I tried installing Compiz, I installed, no hitch there, I was quite pleased with the install, but then, I clicked custom, which said another window would pop up for me….which never happened. So I installed the Compiz Settings Manager, and that wouldn’t work. Then, I got onto Kontact, while chatting to my friends on the KDE IM client Kopete,  which I really liked, it has allot more features than Pigeon has, like web cam support. But, by this time, I was too busy looking around Kontact, and I really liked it.

But…it was 3am and I gave up on KDE, it was too buggy, and didn’t appeal to me. I know people love and hate KDE, same with Gnome and all the other ones, but for myself, I shall not be moving off Gnome. Even though Amarok doesn’t function right, and this is the same for KDE and gnome, it plays a song with a given name, then as soon as it starts playing, changes the name of it. I gave up.

So, I shall stick with my Ubuntu machine for now, I may go back to Windows XP, maybe even Windows Vista, but I know, I won’t go to KDE for a long time yet.

Well, what is Mobile Me? Mobile me is Apples replacement for the current .mac service that they provide. This synchronizes your mail, calendar, contacts onto one secure server, and you get theses synchronized to your Windows PC, Mac, iPhone or you can also use it from a web browser. This is alot like exchange from what i can see.

But, i see this, unlike Microsoft Exchange, to be more for personal use, and for your own stuff. I dont see this being for businesses, even the pricing is a one person, or a family package. No buisness package, which i like.

This service, from the guided tour i have seen, seems very good. Its got a very clean interface like the rest of apple. It seems quite good for the price.

But, will i use it?

Well no i wont. I dont own a mac, or an iPhone, i use windows vista, windows xp, and Ubuntu Linux, and a Sony Ericsson k850i mobile phone, so this wont be that useful to me. Especially as i use google for my mail already, and wouldnt switch right now. I also use yahoo for all of my buisness emails, google calendar, and for some things, google docs. I dont use the contacts feature in google mail, but thats a whole other blog post completly if i wanted to go into detail about that.

If i had a iPhone, or a mac, i could  easily see myself using this. And maybe, in the future, i will.

anyway, i hope i get some feedback on this post, as i would like to see everyone elses opinion on MobileMe.

Thanks,

Danny

EDIT - I forgot to say, Mobile Me also gives you access to upload files onto the servers.

We got a gess from a post of mine what third party websites was thinking to the date of the firefox 3 launch. But in the last couple of days, we have found out from mozilla itself that it is the 17th June, not 27th June.

Thanks,

Danny

I was browsing the web and went onto the blog site weebly.com using Firefox 3. If you click on ‘Try Live Demo,’ it tells you on there in the “Oops” message when Firefox 3 is going to be launched. Take a look for yourself: JUNE 27th!