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April 30, 2006
Speaking at the JAX Conference
Only about a week away from this year's JAX conference, where I'll be doing 2 sessions and moderating a panel discussion. In addition, we will be launching our Ophelos initiative, targeted Open Source offerings for the financial industry. Should be an interesting few days.
Posted by Matthew at 01:43 PM | Comments (1)
Experience with Windows games on a Mac?
I'm thinking of replacing my son's PC with a Mac Mini. For most of what he does, this would be perfect and integrate well into what we have already. However he likes to play games such as "Sims" or "Age Of Empires" on his Windows PC. Has anyone tried these games under Bootcamp and can tell me how they perform? Information about the Mac configuration would be of additional help. Thanks.
Posted by Matthew at 11:00 AM | Comments (1)
April 24, 2006
No ApacheCon for me
Unfortunately I've had to withdraw my ApacheCon Europe session. Due to family scheduling conflicts, it turns out that we would be leaving our 3 kids on their own for a week. And we decided that wasn't such a cool idea after all. I'm sure it will be great conference and hopefully I'll get to go to the next one.
Posted by Matthew at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2006
The last page - or enough is enough?
Russ announces that he's quitting blogging. At least he writes that he's putting his personal notebook "to bed". That's a real pity and a loss for my personal blog-roll. On the other hand, maybe he's just paving the path.
Posted by Matthew at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)
XBox Live Arcade to get MAME ?
Rumor has it that you will soon be able to play your old arcade favorites on the XBox through a special version of MAME. Those were the days - soon to be repeated?
Posted by Matthew at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)
World Cup tickets - revealed
Yesterday, the kind man from DHL delivered the box (yes, really) with our World Cup tickets.
Inside the box:
- 4 tickets for the Germany vs Poland match on June 14. Each ticket is personalized and contains the following note: "Ticket contains a chip - please do not fold or puncture." On the back of the ticket are the Terms and Conditions in an abridged version and the logos of the Official Partners.
- A booklet titled: "Destination Germany". In the booklet, the would-be fan learns interesting factoids about Germany and a few phrases in German. Important things like: "Do you accept MasterCard" (Page 17).
- A couple of tournament guides
- a plastic case for the tickets with a red/yellow card
Posted by Matthew at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2006
Book sales - in color!
The first time I saw Tim O'Reilly present this fascinating visualization of book sales data was at EuroFoo, back in 2004. Now he is posting current data over on the O'Reilly Radar here and here.
Posted by Matthew at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)
World Cup tickets - shipping!
Today I got the official email that my tickets for the Germany - Poland match have been shipped and should soon be arriving. Considering I had to pay for them nearly a year ago - when I applied in the lottery - that's not bad going.
Posted by Matthew at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2006
Red and Blue Easter
A couple of weeks ago, I spent a weekend up on the North Sea coast. Weather was mixed - but the fish was great. Two shots from that weekend, one showing the rather empty Strandkörbe (canopied beach chairs) and the second is the rather nice-looking front of a house.
Posted by Matthew at 07:54 PM | Comments (1)
April 13, 2006
Google Calendar - waiting for synch
Google Calendar has been released - old news by now. Until it provides synchronization functionality I don't think I'll be using it. However, it seems that Google are working on that.
In the coming months, Google Calendar will be able to synchronize with Outlook and mobile devices, Product Manager Carl Sjogreen said.
Posted by Matthew at 04:24 PM | Comments (1)
April 12, 2006
ABC to stream "free" TV episodes
Yesterday, ABC announced that it plans to offer episodes of four of its shows for free streaming on the Net the day after they're broadcast. The episodes will include ads but will be "free". The test will run from May through June and the shows will not be limited to availability in the US. Offering streams of popular shows to a potentially gigantic audience could pose a couple of problems though.
Another sign of the Internet-enabled disruption of traditional media broadcasting.
I wonder what the non-US broadcasting companies think of this move? Here in Germany, we're about a season behind on many of the shows and being able to pick up episodes legally off the Net well in advance of the local showing will be attractive to quite a number of people. How many potential viewers in English and non-English speaking countries will then switch away from their local broadcaster and pick up the episodes off the Net and what will this mean to ad-funded TV in general?
Posted by Matthew at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2006
Fleury gets a Red Hat
Red Hat to buy JBoss. Red Hat issues this press release.
Posted by Matthew at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2006
Boot Camp - more than Windows
I think Apple made a really smart move by allowing people to dual-boot into Windows if they want to. Maybe Apple, as a hardware company, is learning from the Open Source wave faster than many other software companies.
Choice is the new black
Posted by Matthew at 07:25 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2006
Port 25 - Microsoft on Open Source
Microsoft launches Port 25 - a site that focusses on "communications from the Open Source Software Lab @ Microsoft". This from Bill Hilf, General Manager of Platform Strategy:
So why is it called Port 25? Some background on port numbers first. SMTP is short for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is the protocol for sending email messages between servers or from a mail client to a mail server. On a server, the port for SMTP is 25. When you open a port on a server, such as to allow for SMTP traffic, it is commonly referred to as ‘listening’ on the port. Port 25, therefore, is a metaphor for how we are opening the communication lines to for a discussion around Open Source Software and Microsoft. Cute, huh?
Yeah, cute. Ahem. The site is sort of empty at the moment - just a few introductory posts. It will be interesting to see how they spin the content and my guess is that over time we will see a significant shift away from the typical FUD that has been spread in the past. Microsoft will eventually become a peer player in the Open Source scene. Maybe not by Open Sourcing Office or Windows - but certainly by making sure Open Source solutions run well on their platforms and interface with Microsoft products. In the end, it's the customers who stand to win.
Posted by Matthew at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2006
Miki - Socialtext goes mobile
Ross and his team launch Miki, a wiki platform optimized for mobile devices. More details.
Posted by Matthew at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)
Apple opens the Window
Want to run Windows XP on your Intel Mac? Say hello to Boot Camp.
Once youve completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. (Thats the alt key for you longtime Windows users.) After starting up, your Mac runs Windows completely natively. Simply restart to come back to Mac.
And for a moment I thought this was some delayed April Fool's joke.
Posted by Matthew at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2006
Flying goes the Open Source route
In 1926 an airline passenger in the US paid 44 cents to fly a domestic mile. By 2004 that yield had dropped to just over 4 cents per domestic passenger mile (figures adjusted for inflation). In 2006, over one quarter of Ryanair's passengers paid the airline 0 cents to fly (just taxes needed to be paid). Ryanair's boss Michael O'Leary hopes to up that figure to 50% soon.
So, how does he plan on making any money if he's giving the seats away for free? Easy answer if you're in the Open Source business - by getting you to pay for services or by taking a cut from additional third-party revenue. Ryanair now charges passengers for things like checking in baggage and plans on adding in-flight gambling soon.
Makes you wonder how long before you have to pay a little extra for that seasoned pilot who will get you to the right airport.
Posted by Matthew at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)
I'm an Open Source project - buy me
With an - umm - "interesting" choice in wording, Pentaho announce the acquisition of the Kettle project. Kettle is an Open Source project centered around data integration. Matt Casters' announcement on the same subject is more along the lines of the project "joining" Pentaho. Pentaho have hired Matt to be a data integrations architect there.
Posted by Matthew at 04:06 PM | Comments (1)
Off to Skien!
No, not me, although Norway comes in at the top of my list of "move to" countries. Sebastian has signed a contract with eZ systems as and will be moving up there soon. Congratulations to both sides!
Posted by Matthew at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)