Tag: Ubuntu

The end of Google Reader [and what it means to me]…

This is the final installment in my series [rant?] about the death of Google Reader…

Teaching social media in my classes at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and coaching my clients, I frequently quote the words of the great philosophers .38 Special who said:

Google Reader is gone. No farewell message. No thank you for the support. In fact, I can see my feeds in Google Reader, I just can’t interact with them.

A pretty clear indication that Google really doesn’t give a Tinker’s Damn for customers – only their data and the dollars they can glean from it. This whole experience has had a profound impact on me from the first moment months ago when I first learned that Google was killing Google Reader for no good reason [and believe me, I’ve read them all over the past few months].

This stupid move, along with other ones like Windows 8 by Microsoft leave me wondering where I can place my trust. Oddly enough, I find myself rethinking open source products like Ubuntu, Firefox and Thunderbird. Who knows where that will lead?!

In the meantime, thank you Google Reader. Thanks to you, I consumed over a half a million articles in the past 6.5 years of use and I am what I am today because of what I learned from you. And, thank you feedly for stepping into the breach! I have loved you for over 4 years and used you alongside Google Reader. I’m glad you won the reader race!

Even if you have money to burn…

I know I’m opening myself up to a flame war here but I’m going to come right out and say it; the Mac is just not worth the money, especially if you do most of your work in the cloud.

There was a time when the Mac was demonstrably better at some tasks than others and that’s why is used it as my primary platform for 15 years. Heck, I even worked for Apple for 3 years I believed in the product and company so much!

These days though, in my work as an internet consultant, I use Mac, Windows AND Ubuntu and I am fluent in all three. I see no perceptible value in using Mac over the other two; in fact, it’s more the other way around. I like my 64bit Windows 7 machine but as Windows 8 [which appears to be another Vista to me] grabs more desktop real estate, I’m spending more and more time honing my Linux skills. After all, the Ubuntu operating system offers many of the benefits of a Linux or UNIX based operating system that looks good, but it uses inexpensive Windows hardware – the best of all possible worlds! Especially if all you’re doing is using the internet…

Right now, I think the best combination of hardware and software for business blogging is a Windows 7 computer although that may change soon. No matter what, however, you won’t find me paying for a new Mac – I don’t need the industrial design when I’m just looking at a monitor they’re just not worth the cost especially when Firefox, Chrome and Safari run on all of the major computing platforms! Questions? Feedback?

Related articles

 

Steve Dotto has a great post over at Stepcase Lifehack:

Evernote has become, for many of us, the hub at the center of our digital lives. We store everything — from notes to images to web sites to expense reports — in Evernote.

While many productivity apps have built-in Evernote integration, many still don’t. Fortunately there is a terrific technique that allows you to integrate Evernote into almost every app or program.”via How to Use Evernote for Everything [Video].

If you’re an Evernote fan like I am, you’re going to love this…

Me? I’ve posted many times on how important Evernote is to me — especially as Getting Things Done [GTD] ‘container’. Here are some of my greatest hits…

I’ve also done 5 screencasts on various aspects of Evernote and I put them in a playlist for you here…

One last thought. If you’re a Getting Things Done [GTD] fan, you might also enjoy this powerful but inexpensive book…

Click to view and/or buy…
And this one’s only $.99; looks intersting although I haven’t read it…

Click to view and/or buy…
Tux, as originally drawn by Larry Ewing
Image via Wikipedia

“Last week Lenovo lent me one of its X61 ThinkPad laptops so that I could give Ubuntu Linux a try. Having had a bad experience with Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop a few years ago, I had sworn off desktop Linux and determined not to return.

A week into a new trial with Ubuntu Linux, however, it’s clear that desktop Linux has come a long way. I found it extremely easy to use, including when I had to install a program (Skype) that wasn’t included in the supported applications list. This is an operating system that my grandma could (and, in fact, did) use.

This isn’t to say that my week with Ubuntu Linux was uneventful. I had a few struggles, which I’ll detail below. These struggles, however, were almost entirely due to running Ubuntu on unsupported hardware, and not any fault of Ubuntu (or Linux) itself.” Click here to read the full article online…

Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace ...
Image via Wikipedia

“The VAR Guy was flipping though his Sunday morning paper when he spotted an article about Ubuntu Linux. He took a few more sips of coffee to perk up and make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. Sure enough, Ubuntu had made the leap into the mainstream media — earning coverage in Newsday, the eight largest newspaper in the nation. Has Ubuntu reached its tipping point with consumers?

Newsday’s Personal Technology column includes a question from a reader who intends to purchase a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with Ubuntu preloaded. Sweet. The VAR Guy already has a Dell Ubuntu desktop, and also is looking at an Ubuntu laptop.

Newsday’s columnist walks the readers through some potential issues related to Ubuntu (scan down toward the middle of this Newsday page). But overall, letters like this reinforce an undeniable truth: Ubuntu is quietly becoming a mainstream phenomena.” Click here to read more…

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Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace ...
Image via Wikipedia

Open source software may be the answer…

“There’s a persistent perception that open source software is being ignored in the enterprise, that IT management fears it and it ends up being more costly to deploy than proprietary solutions. That’s certainly the perception that some major software vendors would like you to have. But it’s Jeffrey Hammond’s job to dispel those perceptions, at least when they aren’t accurate. As an analyst for Forrester Research, Hammond covers the world of software development as well as Web 2.0 and rich internet applications, so he sees how open source is being used on a daily basis. He’ll be speaking at OSCON, the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, talking about the true cost of using open source, and he gave us a sample of what’s going on in the enterprise at the moment.” Source: Open Source is Infiltrating the Enterprise – O’Reilly Radar 

Go to the source…

Kudos to the folks at Datamation who put this list together…

“Tired of your boring screensavers? Need a game that allows you to survive the boring hours before quitting time? Wish your PC looked more like the terminals in the Matrix?

Or maybe you’re more business-minded: do you need an open-source solution for ERP? Project management? Bookkeeping? CRM?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, keep reading. These 75 noteworthy projects – each deserving of your love and affection – will help you do everything from creating desktop widgets to avoiding repetitive-stress injuries to visualizing distant, exotic landscapes. Or at least dreaming of life beyond your cubicle… “ 75 Popular Open Source Desktop Downloads

There are other lists for specific applications here…

It is possible to have a rich computing experience without paying through the nose for Apple Hardware or Microsoft software. You betcha! It all begins with Ubuntu! Use the contact form if you want to know more…

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Image via CrunchBase

I write frequently about my disdain [hatred is too strong a word] for Microsoft and their evil licensing practices and my newfound love for Ubuntu. Over the weekend, the two final barriers to moving ‘full time’ to Ubuntu were removed. I wrote about one last night — VirtualBox allows you to run Windows seamlessly inside Ubuntu for the application or two you just can’t do without. The last remaining app I needed was a text expander like Texter for Windows or Text Expander for Mac that takes blocks of text and reduces them to keystroke combos. Lifehacker puts it this way…

“You write some blocks of text over and over. “My address is …” for example, or addresses you enter frequently into mapping web sites, or a list of email addresses. Text expansion tools instantly write those blocks for you when you write a trigger word, and are smart enough to auto-insert dates, text you’ve just copied, and then move the cursor to where you’ll be. On Windows computers, your Lifehacker editors use Texter, while the Mac writers run TextExpander (your sole Linux stalwart is tinkering with AutoKey at the moment). Save yourself a few words at a time, and soon you’ll have freed yourself from hours of mechanical typing.” Source: Top 10 Productivity Basics Explained – Productivity – Lifehacker

So today I found Autokey and while it’s a different paradigm than As-U-Type which has been my Windows favorite for many years, it shows great promise. Henceforth, I’ll be working on an experiment on my home computer to NEVER boot into my Windows partition. The transition is now as complete as it’s going to get for awhile. So long Windows — hello, Ubuntu!

btw, go to the source on the blockquoted article; the top 10 productivity basics post is priceless!

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If you’re using Ubuntu…

Google Chrome Logo
Image by Randy Zhang via Flickr

…like I recommend [especially for older computers] then Google’s Chrome browser combined with GNOME Do is a great combination. I create application shortcuts for web applications and then summon them with a keystroke combination. Very fast! Very powerful…

Posted via web from The e1evation facebook page

ShareThis 101

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1492638&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

The ShareThis User Experience from ShareThis on Vimeo

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I had a date with an old ‘flame’ this past week…

PowerBook G4
Image via Wikipedia

Not really — it just felt that way! David Sauter of Envano gave me a Powerbook G4 for a project we’re working on and it was the first time I had used a fast Mac running a current version of OS X. Ever…

I left the Mac back in 2002 — finally got that one job that insisted I move to Windows and left the platform. Prior to that, I had been a Mac user for 15 years — even worked 3 years for Apple — and I was a sold out Mac fanatic. Eventually, I had to leave my first computing love and I didn’t have a chance to look back until this week…

So how did it feel? Meh. That’s it, just meh! I wasn’t overcome by nostalgic feelings of love for my long lost platform and I didn’t get teary-eyed as I touched the keyboard again. Don’t get me wrong — Apple makes a nice notebook and OS X runs well. The big difference? Thanks to Apple’s success there are more hardware/software solutions available than when I worked at Apple during the dark ‘pre-Think Different’ days.

The one thing that make me really happy, though, was to see how well my current strategy of using tools that are cross platform Windows/Mac/Ubuntu is working. I’ve written recently about how for me, the hardware platform is becoming increasingly irrelevant — it’s all about how fast you can get into the ‘cloud’ and get your work done online! For me it’s all about Firefox and other free open source tools that are available for the price of a download. Here are some of the tools that I use and recommend:

You can grab the map and move it around or view it full screen. All of these tools work exceedingly well, run on Windows/Mac/Ubuntu, and are free. Free. And Ubuntu is a free operating system that runs Linux in a way that’s similar to Mac OS X.

The balance of power in the computing space is shifting and I’m glad that I made the move to the cloud and started using Ubuntu and free open source software. Contact me — I’ll be happy to talk with you about the impact this could have on you and your work…

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