Daniel Hardy

So as many of you know I have sold my soul to devil and finally broke down and bought an iPhone.  Over the last month or so I have found it to be a great tool but one that is definitely flawed.

One of the flaws that has been plaguing me is a missing artist on my play list.  This sounds stupid but I thought I was loosing my mind because I could swear that it was there and that I have heard it play when I was using it as background music.  I finally have conclusive proof that it is there and in fact, there is an odd bug that plagues the iPhone.

Basically I can look the song up by its name but when trying to find it by artist there is no listing.  The really odd part is that for this given artist (Pepper) it occurs on my wife’s iPhone as well.

Is Apple trying to boycott this particular artists? (joking)

Jeff Atwood recently wrote a great article about how he gave a small open source project $5000 with no strings attached.  To his surprise 4 months later the money hadn’t been touched.  To me this is a great example of how open source is often about the love and not about the money.

The comments section was of course filled with numerous suggestions of how the developers should have spent the money.  One theme that stood out to me was to spend the money on hiring a graphic designer to come in and update the look of their site or perhaps a marketing firm to help them get the word out.

This really resonated with me as I have been contemplating why so few designers donate their time and energy to free products.  It is intriguing that so many great developers are willing to give up their free time to create amazing products while there appears to be a dramatic shortage of designers, marketers, technical writing, and other “support”(for lack of better term) personnel willing to donate their time.

Is it because only developers are using the products?  This certainly isn’t the case considering some of the greatest applications out there are open source.  Perhaps instead it is because the products these professionals are currently using are not opens source.

Perhaps more important than dwelling on why there is a shortage we should be looking for a solution.  I have on many occasions made comments to friends and colleagues about perhaps supporting an open source product by creating a comp, or giving them usability advice.

With that in mind I am guilty of not contributing as much as I should.  Most of my digital exsitence is now dependent on open source products and as of late I have not been contributing.

I have returned safely from my first trip to the east coast/south.  It was a trip filled with firsts; first time I have been to the east coast, first time I have ridden on a subway (it didn’t go so well), first time to experience a vastly different culture in my own country, first time seeing a true “uptown”, first time I have used navigation to save a life.

All in all the trip was amazing.  There was a bit of everything and as usual I didn’t take enough pictures.  To check out those that I did take view my flickr map or if you preferr you can just view the regular flickr.

This one came across my reader today and is definitely worth sharing. If anyone is feeling particularly generous don’t hesitate to drop ship a set to me to match my logo.

When I was growing up I remember seeing commercials by AT&T that showed all kinds of “future” technology like the smart fridge or the automated home.  The point of the commercial was that AT&T was the company that would enable you to enjoy this type of connectivity.

The one commercial that I remember being most impressed by showed two children selecting a movie from their TV.  Once the movie was selected it instantly started playing.  At the time (guessing 1996-8) there was nothing like this.  There was no Youtube or iTunes.  There was really no media streaming to speak of.  The average home was just starting to get online.

Fast-forward to present time and it appears AT&T’s commercial is now a reality.  Cox Communications recently launched an on demand service.  This is true on demand television. Simply pick out the show you wish to watch and hit play.  The show starts instantly.  From here you can fast-forward, rewind and even pause.

The system works pretty smooth overall.  This is not to say that there isn’t room for improvement.  There is no search functionality and the navigation is slow and ugly(8 bit).  Both of these could easily be resolved and may be related to my older cable box.  It would also be nice if the shows would remain available for an indefinite amount of time.  Currently they are available for a set period and after that they are replaced by newer programming.

Even with its short commings it is definetly worth a try.  If you are a Cox digital tv subscriber simply turn to channel 01 and enjoy.

A few weeks ago I wrote a brief post about the newest version of Ubuntu, 8.04 (Hardy Heron).  The post consisted of my first impressions of the new system and really looked at the surface level enhancements.  After giving it some thought I decided to revisit the topic from a different perspective.  Is it worth upgrading?

With each new version of Ubuntu the reason to upgrade is diminished.  This is because the operating system continues to grow stronger and stronger making each consecutive version have less and less added value.  This is not to say there isn’t several good reasons to risk the headaches that could ensue.

The first reason that comes to mind is the improved overall experience.  A lot of work has gone into smoothing out the details of the operating system.  One area that I have noticed a great improvement is in the boot process.  In previous versions the boot process has been choppy with several different resolution changes that make the whole thing seem disjointed and a bit jarring.  In hardy this has been smoothed out a great deal (at least on my Sony Vaio).  Now instead of having several noticeable transitions between resolutions and background colors you get a smooth transition where the colors are better matched and appear to transition smoothly.

Another great enhancement comes again during the boot process.  Every 30 or so boots Ubuntu will scan your disk drive for errors.  While this is great feature as it provides a level of data security, it can be a bit annoying when you are in a hurry.  In Hardy Heron the user has the ability to bypass this by simply pressing the ESC key.

Once the system has booted up you will see the familiar menu options and applications.  You don’t have to look deep to see a couple of new faces such as Transmission (BitTorrent Client) and Brasero (disk burning utility).  These two offer a great upgrade to their predecessors with improved usability and increased functionality.

Another feature that I have found handy is the ability to “Bookmark” web based drives and server connections.  This is a nice touch as it allows you to unmount the drive with out loosing the settings.  For someone who uses several different network drives and is a little OCD about their desktop this is a great feature.  To utilize it simply select the “Add Bookmark” check box the first time you connect to your drive.  From then on you can access the drive from the “Places” menu or the “Bookmarks” area of Nautilus.

Better hardwareware support is something to strongly consider when upgrading.  If you have any problem hardware typically an upgrade offers an opertunity to get support as the kernel is always adding new drivers.  In my previous post I mentioned a problem with my network card.  This has been resolved and was simply a problem in the beta level software.  One thing I do enjoy is with the new update my system runs completely open.  I no longer have to depend on any closed source drivers (Thank you Intel for open sourcing the 3945 driver).  To many this may be marginal but I believe in open source software and try to use it when it is available.  It also typically means better support and performance.

The final reason for upgrading is to have a Long Term Support (LTS) version.  These versions will recieve support form Cannonical for 3 years meaning you won’t need to upgrade for quite sometime.

Overall I think the upgrade is worth it for me, afterall I have my Home directory on a separate partition so even a full install isn’t to much work

I decided to take a minute and update my Wordpress install to the new and improved Wordpress 2.5.  I must say I really like the new look and feel.  It is light, clean and appears to run a bit faster.  It is clear that they had input from a usability expert as it utilizes many techniques I employ daily.

The only change that I am not sold on is the idea of having the categories located below the post.  To me this just makes it easier to forget to adjust/add the proper categories for each post.  For many users this information will be below the fold making it difficult to find.

One area major advancements where made in is the handling of pictures and other media types.  There is a new multi-file uploader that is simple and easy to use.  It even gives you a preview after the upload allowing you to verify that the proper files where uploaded.

If you are a current Wordpress user or are considering starting a blog, I highly recommend upgrading to the newest version.

I recently wrote a post discussing the strange behavior of Live.com.  It appears that the search results for “Daniel Hardy” have changed again at live.com.  They have returned to there original state.

This really makes me wish I would have taken a screen shot.

“In an announcement on the Ubuntu mailing list today, Mark Shuttleworth outlined plans for Ubuntu 8.10, the next major version after Hardy Heron. Intrepid Ibex is tentatively scheduled for release in October.” - arstechnica.com

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When I started this blog I paid careful attention to my search rankings at the big three search engines (google, yahoo, and live.com) for the term “Daniel Hardy”. Shortly after its inception I was able to snag the #1 slot at Live.com, #3 slot at yahoo.com and #4 slot at google.com. Today the picture has changed a bit with the most interesting jump coming from Live.com.

It appears that I am no longer listed at Live.com. I am not sure how this works as my rankings on the other two have increased to #1 at yahoo and #2 at google. The conspiracy theorist in me (while small) thinks that perhaps all the discussions of Ubuntu are at the root of this decline. More likely this is a great demonstration of what a difference there is between these search providers.

Personally I find this difference to be extremely valuable. It is like a second opinion or another perspective on a given topic. Unfortunately one of these companies may soon be broken apart and melted into one of the other two. Hopefully this will not be the case but it is a tough world and Google is a monster of a competitor.