Microsoft’s Zune to rival Apple’s iPod | CNET News.com Little is known of this development yet apart from the fact that the Zune brand covers both hardware and software, that one device will be hard-drive based and have wireless capabilities, and that the first device will come out before the end of the year (i.e., … Continue reading “Zune (Microsoft’s iPod/iTunes rival)”
Can Windows and Linux Learn to Play Nice?: A commercial company has to build intellectual property, while the GPL, by its very nature, does not allow intellectual property to be built, making the two approaches fundamentally incompatible, Muglia said. Interesting take on “intellectual property.’ Would benefit from a bit more of an explanation. Is “IP” … Continue reading “Microsoft Disinforms on Open-Source and Free-Software”
A rather candid interview (in French) with Microsoft VP for Office development, Antoine Leblond (a fellow Québécois).
Sounds like iWork for iPad will export to Word but not to PowerPoint or Excel.
I’m one of those who feel the iPad is the right tool for the job.
Been thinking about names again. Partly because of Lexicon Branding, a Sausalito, CA firm specialized in naming research for brands. As it so happens, my master’s thesis was on proper names. I mainly focused on anthroponyms (personal names) and toponyms (place names), but the connection is obvious between Lexicon’s work and what I have done … Continue reading “Naming Significance”
Open Access I’ve been enthusiastic about OA (open access to academic texts) for a number of years. I don’t tend to be extremely active in the OA milieu but I do use every opportunity I can to talk about OA, both in formal academic contexts and in more casual and informal conversation. My own views … Continue reading “Actively Reading Open Access”
Ok, it probably shouldn’t become part of my habits but this is another repost of a blog comment motivated by the OLPC XO. This time, it’s a reply to Niti Bhan’s enthusiastic blogpost about the eeePC: Perspective 2.0: The little eeePC that could has become the real “iPod” of personal computing This time, I’m heavily … Continue reading “Handhelds for the Rest of Us?”
Repost from: Lounge: Apple Touch Devices in the Classroom? (Some redundant parts from the last post.) Watched and blogged about Apple’s enterprise and development media event, yesterday. The event was about what I call “Touch” products (iPhone and iPod Touch). One thing which struck me is that Phil Schiller started the enterprise section of that … Continue reading “Touch Devices in Education”
I’m still on the RDF. Apple‘s March 6, 2008 event was about enterprise and development support for its iPhone and iPod touch lines of handheld devices. Lots to think about. (For convenience’s sake, I’ll lump together the iPod touch and the iPhone under the name “Touch,” which seems consistent with Apple’s “Cocoa Touch.”) Been reading … Continue reading “Touch Thoughts: Apple’s Handheld Strategy”
Saw a few things about Adobe’s AIR today, including a New York Times piece describing the “Webtop” play. In that NYT piece, a mention was made of Adobe’s own Buzzword “online word-processor.” Tried it out and, if it’s a sign of things to come, there might be some cool stuff happening for the webware enthusiast. Buzzword has some niceties … Continue reading “Adobe and “Cloud Computing””
To summarize the situation: Most of the software for which I paid a fee, I don’t really use. Most of the software I really use, I haven’t paid a dime for. I really like no-cost software. You might want to call me “cheap” but, if you’re developing “consumer software,” you may need to pay attention … Continue reading “Free As In Beer: The Case for No-Cost Software”
Wow! I’m impressed. No, I’m not a shill for AT&T. And I’m not even an AT&T customer yet. So, what am I impressed by? Customer service. Quality of customer service. Customer service representatives who do their job well. Instead of just assuming that it should happen all the time and complain when it doesn’t, I … Continue reading “Praises for AT&T”
Yeah, I tend to get overly enthusiastic about new devices. And so does a large part of the “tech press.” But, once in a while, a device comes which pretty much everyone predicts will fail. So, recently, I’ve been thinking about playing devil’s advocate with those predictions. Basically, stating that some device which seems … Continue reading “Crazy Predictions: Amazon Kindle”
He’s been called a rogue ninja. And I think he deserves a raise. Whatever he’s getting. “Rogue ninjas”… I wonder if we can get that on our business cards. Best compliment ever « whateverblog. Well, these days, I’m doing “evaluation of quality” surveys over the phone so I often hear about people who apparently deserve … Continue reading “Joe the Ninja”
Much to be said about a recent ITConversations podcast episode. Ostensibly, this episode was about the LibriVox success story. (LibriVox is a community project producing public domain audiobooks from public domain books in diverse languages.) Yet, during this conversation, Web analyst (and Microsoft employee) Jon Udell along with LibriVox founder Hugh McGuire managed to share … Continue reading “Audio People of the World: “You, Knight!””
Yet another Apple rumour, this time about iTunes allowing some type of subscription model: Media Biz Apple changes its iTune? « In this case, the comments to the blog entry are, dare I say, more insightful than the entry itself. Movie subscriptions would make more sense than music subscriptions because people are used to rent … Continue reading “Speculating on iTunes Subscription”
In response to Jess on organising one’s information. FavoUrites: Social Bookmarking (PART) My own use of social bookmarking isn’t that social nor that efficient. At this point, I tend to simply add things to my del.icio.us account as a way to remind myself that I would eventually like to blog about those links. Sometimes they’re … Continue reading “Bookmarks and Tags”
I might enjoy Zoho more than I thought I would. In a browser (like Firefox 2) with a “spell as you type” mode, it can be fairly useful. However, the desktopization of Zoho Writer (a widget which allows users of Zoho Writer, Sheets, or Show to edit files offline) wasn’t working for me, just now. … Continue reading “Zoho Tools”
This one is even more exciting than the SecondLife statement. After the announcement that the USPTO was reexamining its patents in a case against open source course management software, Blackboard incorporated is announcing that it is specifically not going to use its patents to sue open source and other non-commercial providers of course management software. … Continue reading “Legal Sense: CMS Edition”
Disparate 