Ubuntu Edge

Yesterday Canonical, the commercial entity which backs Ubuntu, launched their Indiegogo fixed funding campaign to raise $32m for the Ubuntu Edge project.

Shiny Ubuntu/Android smartphone. Want!

The Ubuntu Edge is going to be a dual boot smartphone running my favourite OSs Ubuntu and Android, with what looks like beautiful and powerful hardware. Initial specs are of a device with 4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. The device will be able to be connected to a keyboard/mouse/monitor and run a full desktop environment as well as deliver a powerful smartphone experience.

The Indiegogo fixed funding campaign kicked off yesterday and a day in has already passed 10% of the total goal. I dilly dallied too long and seem to have missed out on the $600 option to get the device in May of next year for a discounted price. I will be making a token $20 contribution and will wait until the device is available through traditional commercial channels to get one.

The idea of a smartphone that acts as a more traditional computer when docked is not new, Ubuntu for Android has been pushing the idea for a while now. I like the idea, almost as much as the Chromebook/Chromebox one.

The smartphone/tablet/desktop computing world is going to be very different this time next year, lets see what Google, Mozilla, Samsung as well as Canonical get up to before then.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Source:  Indiegogo

Diaspora* Will Now Be A Comunity Project

Diaspora*, the free, distributed and open source social network, is now a community project.

In an email to Diaspora* users and people who had signed up to people who had signed up at www.joindiaspora.com, Daniel Grippi, one of the founding members of the Kickstarter and project, announced the plans for the Facebook/Twitter FOSS competitor.

Here's the email text:

Dear Community,

We have been overwhelmed with your support the past week after our annoucnment of Makr.io and the opening up of signups on joindiaspora.com.  This week, we are excited to share with you some important Diaspora announcements.

When we started Diaspora two years ago, the project kicked off with amazing reception and support from people that believed in our ultimate goal: giving users ownership over their data. It's a powerful idea, one that captured the imaginations of millions of people across the world. This vision has expanded and evolved over the past two years that we have been working on it as the project has grown.

Diaspora* began when we were still at NYU—just four guys trying to scratch our own itch. We had an idea about how social networks could work in a new and exciting way. We intended to be done over the course of a summer, and with an expected budget of $10,000 from our Kickstarter campaign. The reception of this idea was so good that we managed to reach 20 times the expected amount in donations, and the project expanded to cover far more than just a summer. It's been over two years now, and we are proud of what Diaspora has become.

Today, the network has grown into thousands of people using our software in hundreds of installations across the web. There are hundreds of pods that have been created by community members, and it has become one of the biggest Github projects to date. It has been translated to almost fifty languages, with hundreds of developers worldwide contributing back to the project.

Diaspora has grown into something more than just a project four guys started in their office at school. It is bigger than any one of us, the money we raised, or the code we have written. It has developed into something that people all over the world care about and are inspired by.  We think the time is right to reflect this reality, and put our code where our hearts lie.

Today, we are giving control of Diaspora to the community.

As a Free Software social project, we have an obligation to take this project further, for the good of the community that revolves around it. Putting the decisions for the project’s future in the hands of the community is one of the highest benefits of any FOSS project, and we’d like to bring this benefit to our users and developers. We still will remain as an important part this community as the founders, but we want to make sure we are including all of the people who care about Diaspora and want to see it succeed well into the future.

If you look around, you’ll see that we’ve made an effort to open up to the community more to help better serve it. We’ve opened up our Pivotal Tracker for community developers help join in (You can sign up here), we’ve launched a tool that deploys one-click installations to the Heroku app hosting service, and we’ve updated joindiaspora.com to be more community-centric, showcasing other pods a user can join.

This will not be an immediate shift over. Many details still need to be stepped through. It is going to be a gradual process to open up more and more to community governance over time. The goal is to make this an entirely community-driven and community-run project. Sean Tilley, our Open Source Community Manager will spearhead community efforts to see that this happens.  Stay tuned to our blog for a message from Sean concerning next steps, as well as ways to get involved in helping with the transition process.

This is a new opportunity for Diaspora to grow further than ever before.  We can’t wait to see what we can do together.

Daniel and Maxwell


PS. We also want to give special thanks to a few people who recently, and over the past few years, have shown us what a special community we have. It is by no means complete:
Mr ZYX, sean tilley, David Morley, Jan-Christoph Borchardt, Joe Braun, David Morley, Hans Fase, Florian Staudacher, Movilla, Stephan Schulz, Sarah Mei, Tom Scott, kinky joe, denschub, justin thomas, Steven Hancock, Diasp, Jason Robinson 

So there you have it. In my view this is the project up on its feet and ready to roam the FOSS world and Internet. I am on Diaspora*, but don't use it much because nowadays I find Google Plus more interesting and to have more features.

With Dalton Caldwell's App.net starting to move and grow after his successful Kickstarter-like effort, and Diaspora*, Google Plus and other social networks, there seems to be much more choice for people than there was 18 months ago. Maybe Facebook should be worried about erosion of their users and users loyalty via small chipping rather than one large direct competitor.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions.

XBOX Live, I Don't Live There! Fail! [Rant]

I live in many contradictions. The biggest contadiction is probably being an open source software enthusisast and user while also being an Microsoft XBOX Live gamer and user. While I detest Microsoft Windows in its various incarnations on PCs, I love my XBOX 360 and gaming on it. As things stand at the moment, I'm luke warm in relation to Windows Phone 7 but more about that in another post.

I love my XBOX but...

Today I am writing this blog post because I'm annoyed at Microsoft for not letting me change my XBOX Live Gamertag (the account used to purchase content and play games online) from the original country setting (Italy - accidentally set in 2008) to my actual country setting (UK).
Until recently I hadn't been to bothered by the Italian XBOX Live account. My girlfriend was quite annoyed by this, because when movies/trailers/game demos were downloaded they were either dubbed into Italian or had Italian subtitles. Now I want to take advantage of XBOX Live and my XBOX to use all the newer cooler services available (in the UK) such as Last.fm, the on demand TV and video services. Because my XBOX Live gamertag is set as Italian, I can't access these services. Now I'm annoyed.

I have a XBOX Live gamertag with almost 8000 points on it, 100 unused MS Points in the account and would like to carry on using my Todoleo gamertag without losing it. I definitely don't want to be paying for two concurrent XBOX Live subscriptions, I already hate myself inside for paying for one.
There is no way I can change the country setting to my XBOX Live gamertag, I have tried in many ways. This morning I called the XBOX Live customer service number listed on the XBOX.com website and got through to a customer service representative who very politely told me I couldn't change Todoleo from an Italian account to a UK one, and that the best solution would be to create a UK account. I then asked to take things further to make a complaint about this and was told it was not possible. I was however asked for my email address and told I would be sent a link to a form for feedback on the matter. About an hour after the call I still have not received the link.
It is absurd that in this day and age I can't change the account settings from one country to another. Why is this? Why can't Microsoft recognise the fact that people move around, change the country they live in? All that is happening is that people who do move and are inconvenienced are getting angry and probably less loyal to the services and products. I definitely am!
Anger and hatred are flowing through me at the moment, I feel the dark side of the Force coursing through my veins... I'm going to go and play some Star Wars The Force Unleashed to get over this. Offline.
As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions. Let me know if I should ditch my XBOX and opt for a Sony PS3 instead (or is that just as bad?)

Ice Cream Sandwich Released [:-)], MoDaCo Down [:-(]!

As reported on The Verge, the Android Open Source code to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has been released! This means that anyone can start playing about with the open source code and using it in custom ROMs and ripping out some of the Ice Cream Sandwich goodness, if they wish to...

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Has Been Released!

My first reaction when reading the news was "Quick! I need to get over to android.modaco.com and see if any of the clever people have ported Android 4.0 to the ZTE Skate/Orange Monte Carlo/BAP!". Sadly at the time of posting android.modaco.com is down. Hopefully it will be back up soon and porting will be underway.

MoDaCo Down! :-(

On Twitter I noticed a couple of interesting tweets from CyanogenMod, the leader/bacon lover of CyanogenMod fame: the first tweet reads as follows: "..and we're off. check back in 2 months :) #cm9 #ics" This means that the CyanogenMod community has already started working on CyanogenMod version 9 based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. They may have it ready in a couple of months. Why not check the ETA with them... (that's just a joke. The first rule of CyanogenMod is to never ask for ETAs).

The second tweet "We're still going to get CM7.2 out the door while CM9 is being worked on." means that the  current version of CyanogenMod is not deprecated, there will still be one last hurrah for the Android 2.3.x Gingerbread based ROM.

[UPDATE] MoDaCo is back up and running. When I got back from work everything was where/how it was supposed to be.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions. Enjoy Android 4.0 if/when you get a taste of it!

Microsoft Kinect for XBOX 360 FTW!

Before I start, with this blog post, I should let you know about my views on Microsoft and their products: I disagree with their anticompetitive business practices, think that their market dominance is bad for the IT industry and the global economy as a whole. As most human beings I live in a bit of a contradiction: although a Linux user and a Microsoft Windows OS boycotter, I own and use a Microsoft XBOX 360 games console, pay for and use XBOX Live Gold membership and generally am a bit of an XBOX 360 fanboy. I am aware that this is going to attract hate comments on my blog, accusations of hypocrisy and moral inconsistency as well as just general spam.

The Kinect Sensor Peripheral For The XBOX 360

A week ago Microsoft launched its Kinect for XBOX 360 in the UK. Kinect is a webcam-style peripheral (accessory) for the Xbox 360 games console, it enables users to interact with the XBOX 360 without a physical controller using body gestures and spoken commands.

During the month of September I was at a Microsoft training event for the Kinect, and tried out the pre-release beta of the peripheral and some of the games that would be available for it at launch. It was great fun, and gave me a good idea of how it would work on the XBOX 360. At a conference in October, I got to mess around with it again, try out more games and lose any street-cred I had left on stage in front of other conference delegates. (currently my street-cred it is at an all time low, probably in a negative range...).

On the day before the launch, my colleagues and I set up an XBOX 360 with a Kinect sensor and hooked it up to a 40" LED backlit LCD TV. Since then it has attracted a lot of interest from people of many different age groups passing by in-store. Image conscious customers won't step in front of it to try it out, but sometimes walk to a checkout to purchase it anyway. Kids love it and often are parked at the display while their parents browse other departments or are doing the rest of their shopping.

Kinect is a direct competitor to the Nintendo Wii and Sony's Playstation Move. In my opinion it is a superior system, and much better value for money than its competitors. Here's a summary of why:

• Kinect is a one off purchase as far as peripherals go. There is no need to purchase extra conrollers or controller add-ons (as is the case with the Wii and Playstation Move) both for single and multi-player use.
• Kinect is better value for money when bundled with a console and is on a platform that can provide HD entertainment (unlike the Nintendo Wii)
• Kinect uses full body control which means you can use your whole body to control the games and/or interfaces (unlike the Nintendo Wii or Playstation Move which only track one point in space on the conroller). Think of it like multi-touch on a touchscreen but with depth added to it.
• Voice control with Kinect is very, very good. In-store we have a pretty loud and noisy environment, yet it still works most of the time. Apparently voice recognition is coming to Kinect in a future update as well.
• Open Source drivers have been already developed and released less than a week from the UK launch. If you want to, you can plug a Kinect Sensor into your PC and use it as a 3D video capture tool (it works out cheaper than buying a 3D webcam...)

The games available at launch with the device are pretty varied and aimed at the "casual gamer" market created and dominated up until now by Nintendo with the Wii console. Dance Central by Harmonix (developers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band) is a Guitar Hero like game where your guided dance moves earn you points. While with Guitar Hero and Rock Band all you do is tap buttons in certain sequences, with Dance Central and Kinect you have to actually replicate dance moves. This is probably my favourite game for Kinect so far and lead cause of my negative street-cred.

Kinect has pushed me further into XBOX 360 Fanboy territory, and deeper into a hole in moral no man's land when it comes to my views on tech and IT. Kinect for XBOX 360 is now on my tech and gadget shopping list.