Category: Software

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Software Technology

Ubuntu 11.10 makes Ubuntu a serious competitor in the mainstream desktop market

The mainstream desktop operating system market has been long dominated by Microsofts’ Windows. Second to Windows is Apple’s Mac OSX. Although Linux has been around much longer than most people would know, its inability to capture even the slight market share in the desktop market had been known for a long time.

For those who don’t know what Linux is, Linux is a free open source operating system. There are two parts to it(yes I am grossly simplifying this). The first part is the Linux core operating system called the kernel, and then there are different flavors or distribution of linux. Individuals and companies can take the core operating system, modify it or add more on top of the existing core. There are literally over a hundred different flavours of linux!

 

Linux desktop was always for hardcore computer geeks and programers and it was NOT pretty.

Enters Ubuntu!

The main Linux desktop players according me were Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse. What Ubuntu has done to Linux desktop is amazing giving it the wow factor! We’re not just talking about which free open source operating system is better, we’re talking about competing with proprietary  software like Windows and MacOS.

 

Let’s start of with this stunning Login in screen! Nay, not a login screen, … a welcome screen!

 

Office Suite

Ubuntu comes preinstalled with LibreOffice which has all that you need and perhaps a little more too – its FREE! I have used MS Office, then moved to OpenOffice, which is also a great office suite and one which you can installed on Ubuntu too, and now I use LibreOffice. Libre office opens every possible document type you can think of even MS office 2007 and 2010 files. You can even save in .docx which is what MS Word 2007 uses.  And you can export it into PDF format!

The Ubuntu Dash

Here is a side by side Simple and Advanced view for you. Things are really easy to find with their smart categorizing and if you cant find what you’re looking for, just type it in the search bar! If you want to play some games,…type games,. if you’re looking for Office apps, well type that! Looking for music…you know the rest.

It even shows you what is installed and what you can install from Ubuntu Software Center! That is amazing!

When has my MacOS spotlight search showed be available games when I type “games”? :(..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ubuntu Software Centre

Ubuntu Software Centre is your one stop shop experience. This is just like App store on your Iphone and is a response to the App store on  a mac. Does Windows have something like this? Not that I know of, but then I haven’t used Windows in the past 2 years or so.

In Ubuntu Software Centre, you can browse by different categories, you can check your history of what program was installed/remove at what date, and you can see a quick snapshot of all the programs installed on your Ubuntu.

Social Networking

Your Ubuntu system comes pre-configured to get you started with Facebook, Google Talk, twitter etc..And you can manage all of your networks from one place. Take that Windows,… take that Mac Os and take that Google Chro…umm… never mind…

Amazing Search

Ubuntu search is brilliant. You search by name, and then you can narrow your search down by size of the file, type of file; whether it is an image, document, audio, video or presentation and by when it was last modified. It is also very quick to give you your search results!

Mac’s Expose clone

So ya, sure they have copied macs expose feature. For those who don’t know what this is, when you click twice on an application icon on the dash you see all your application windows. See below. This is an awesome feature for folks like me who have multiple windows running in the background.

Multiple Desktops

Ubuntu has had this since its inception, and no need to explain. See below.

Ubuntu One

This is Ubuntu’s cloud service. You can store and sync your files and music on multiple computers so that you’re always up to date and its FREE!(you get 5GB of storage; upgrade is available). Ubuntu One Music Streaming offers music-streaming apps for iPhone and Android phones. The “Music Streaming” package costs $3.99 a month or $39.99 per year. It just keeps getting better!

 

Categories
Software Technology

Did the Lion Really Roar? – A Quick Look at Mac OSX Lion

Apple calls it “The worlds most advanced operating system advances even further”. Could it be? Could apple have come up with another ‘Magical Thing’? Just like the IPad2?… Wait.. what? Is that sarcasm? Maybe… or maybe not.

My first reaction which I tweeted was, “The new Mac OSX Lion gives me stuff I wanted, but takes away stuff I need and then gives me stuff that I neither need or want…”

Then there were a bunch of “WTF”, but now slowly using it for close to 3 weeks I am getting accustomed to the so-called features that advances the most advanced operating system even further.

Here’s a few things that I like about the new OSX Lion.

  • Mission Control – and the Grouping of Apps.  Lion’s predecessors created a mess of all the open apps and files in one big clutter. At first this grouping feature felt a bit annoying because I was so used to looking at all my files at once. But now that I have gotten use to it, this is so much better. It keeps things organized and saves you time in the long run(once you get used to it)

  • Desktops – spaces were removed and replaced with Desktops, and I know many people who are complaining about this. Some even going on a rant like little kids who just got their candy stolen from them. I never really used spaces on my Snow Leopard because I actually thought it sucked (yet another technical term) in comparison to Ubuntu’s desktops and how easy it was to move from one desktop to the other and move files around. Lion actually does it different now and at first glance (just like all other new additions) seems like a very wrong thing that Apple did. But it’s actually much easier to move files around and keep things separated and spawning off new desktop is a breeze… just drag and drop

 

  • New Finger Gestures – I am still not a 100% satisfied with this.  I no longer can zoom in and out in Finder, or go Top-Bottom with 3 fingers in Firefox. Safari seems to have crashed a few times, but that’s why I use Firefox 99% of the time. And they took away my 4 finger swipe to switch between apps, instead of I have to use Command+ Tab, feels like windows again. But I can use that to switch between Desktops so I guess it’s still okay.

  • LaunchPad – This feature is something that I have totally ignore and is of no use to me, and it just feels annoying to say the least. However, it may still come in handy for most people out there. It organizes all your applications like the Iphone, and the Ipad and uses the same kind of finger swipe to switch between pages of applications. A plus for the average user – not for me.

  • Air Drop – have not used it and A bit disappointed because it only works with Lion. Not Cool.

  • Full Screen mode – nice but not a must. If they took it away tomorrow. I wont even notice it.

 

  • Mail & Calendar – I like the fact that exchange support is better than before and Create Account wizard is much like that on Iphone and IPad, some improvements in the Mail and ICal interface. So overall its a nice improvement, but I still wont be using it because it’s not enough and simply no match for Gmail and Google Calendar.

  • THE LION REMEMBERS – I saved the best for last. This by far is my most loved features. When you want to shut down your computer it asks you: “Reopen Windows when Logging back in?”. and I gleefully say Okay :). And the next time I turn my computer on, the Lion remembers all my open applications and files and arranges the windows the way I had left it. When I get to work, I want to get started right away. This gets everything ready for me and I don’t need a note to myself, or even have to remember what I was working on the night before. It’s right there… This is one feature where I can say “The Lion Roars”

 

Categories
Business Marketting Software Technology Web

Project Management Tools – PHProjekt Vs SugarCRM Vs Dolibarr

Has anyone ever a difficult time organizing their meetings, leads, prospect clients, current customer issues, projects and TODOs. I know I have. I am pretty organized, but still I want and need a centralized system from where I can track everything, something that quickly gives me an overall picture. Currently I use text documents, spread sheets, gmail, google calendar and my memory to accomplish this.

I have thought about getting  a CRM system or a Project Management Software to help me with my getting more organized and efficient. Just yesterday I seriously started doing a lot of research and testing things out. I was looking for a LAMP based web application that handles project management and CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Although I’m a proud owner of by business, I’m still pretty much regarded as a freelancer as opposed to an entrepreneur. I need something simple that gets the work done.

I narrowed it down to these 3:

  1. SugarCRM
  2. Dolibarr
  3. PHProjekt

Now I’m really confused as to which one I should use.

These are some of the things that I need.

  • Ability to have customer accounts related to projects
  • Add and schedule different tasks inside a project
  • Time tracking for each task and summary of time spent on each project
  • ability to calculate ROI (not a must but good to have)
  • Keep customer related info such as project history, internal notes as to what kind of sales strategy is working with this customer, project proposals, services they are currently using from me etc…
  • Keep track of work that I outsource
  • Controllable access to let contractors check and update their tasks, and have clients update and check project issues and progress

Any help in deciding what I should be using is very much welcomed. Please leave a comment or contact me from my contact page. Thanks

Categories
Internet Software Technology Web

#CIRA 2010

I attended the annual CIRA(Canadian Internet Registration Authority) annual general meeting. There were two brilliant keynote speakers Terry O’Reilly – radio host of CBC’s O’Reilly and The Age of Persuasion, Mitch Joel – Social Media expert and author of Six Pixels of Separation. There was a panel of “Architects of the Internet”, which had some of the most brilliant and pioneers in the field and they discussed the origins and the future of the Internet.

Paul Vixie – Internet Systems Consortium(ISC). He is the primary author of BINDv8, has been contributing to Internet protocols and UNIX systems since the 1980s. He has developed tools like, sends, rtty, cron etc…

John Demco – Webnames.ca. John is basically the God Father of “.ca”. He helped create the .CA domain in 1987 and was its initial registrar, and chairing the CA Domain Committee until 2000. He has also been responsible for chairing and managing a number of academic and research networks.

Chris O’Neil – Google Canada. Chris leads Google’s operations in Canada as Country Director for Google Canada. He is focused on building Google’s brand and driving innovation to help fuel growth for Canadian Business.

Byron Holland – President and CEO of CIRA.

Categories
Business Internet Marketting Software Technology Web

Get mobile but dont throw your laptop away

Everyone everywhere is getting mobile – actually this statement is so 2000. What I should be saying is everyone is mobile and everyone is connected everywhere every time, and the fact is even that this is so 2006.

The question that I am trying to answer is – should we be throwing away our desktops and laptops and go completely mobile with cell phones and tablets like the iPad?

Definitely throw away your desktop. If you just bought one, then keep it to store your media and then when it’s time to throw it away, throw it away.

Laptops – keep those because they won’t be going away anytime soon. The iPad isn’t really a netbook killer yet and netbooks simply put are not notebooks. There are a lot of things that the iPad doesn’t have. Like a web cam, less computing power and etc etc. We’ve heard all about the iPad haven’t we?

Even this blog was posted from my phone, and I am not talking about using a web browser on my phone. I’m actually using a wordpress app on my iPhone to draft and post. I can approve, disapprove and delete comments directly from this app.

When I need to go somewhere and I don’t know where it is, I don’t even bother checking. I get in my car, look it up the gps on my IPhone and I’m off.

I don’t carry a watch on me, I use my phone(likes millions do these days), I don’t keep alarm clock – got a phone. And remember those daily planners, those little books they used to carry back in the days – ya you don’t even need that anymore, and if you are still carrying those – shame on you!

Get a smart phone!!

Even shopping had been made easy. Some of the major stores have their own apps for phone like the iphone and you can browse their entire catalog.

Just about to head into a meeting, so I’ll just wrap it up here, but stay stunned!

Categories
Internet Software Technology Web

Technology Overload

As much as I love technology and especially the internet, I think we are starting to push its threshold. The internet was supposed to make life easier, and for some time it did, but now it seems more and more things are popping up and we’ve begun to push limits.

Especially starting with Web 2.0 and the online social network craze,  it almost seems we are racing against time. Everything is super fast, super connected and super “oh my God, get me out of here”.

Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube, and what not. All these networks were meant to keep us connected and get us closer, but on one end it seems that we all are getting so close we’re overlapping onto each other and invading all kinds of spaces that we can think of. And on the other hand our ‘online’ world instead of making the world smaller is becoming so huge that we don’t know who’s who and what’s where anymore.

Google just launched Google Buzz – I thought it was going to be Google Wave that was going go to be the next big thing. Another online social networking feature but this time added to Gmail. This means more networks, more feeds, more updates, more people that I don’t know adding me and trying to be my friend so that they can send me mass pokes, and walls and updates about things that I don’t care about.

Again, as I said, don’t get me wrong I love technology and I love the Internet, but it’s just getting too much. EVERYONE is on Twitter or Facebook to say the least. People want to get ‘connected’ to everyone it seems. How can people have 500 friends? How can they tweet so much? I bet if you send a friend request to a 100 most random people on Facebook, 80 of them will add you the very same day; the other 20 might add you in the following days or if not, then they don’t use their facebook account anymore.

Even I started an online social networking site called kesario.com few months back. It’s not working as well as I thought it would. I wanted to come up with solutions, and the more I spend time studying the trends the more I’m realizing that something drastic is about to happen on the Internet.

What made me think was this. Yesterday I launched the site wordsthatmatter.net for Valentine’s Day. It was a crazy idea that I had and thought it would be very interesting. Anyway, to market this site, I decided to use all these social networks. There were so many people who just kept accepting my friend requests, and following me on twitter. I opened an account specially for that site so no one really knows me, yet everyone kept adding me as a friend and following my tweets.

People on facebook and twitter are already using it to do mass marketing, and now Google Buzz. There are SO MANY of these now. Yes I know, even my site kesario.com is one of them. Sooner or later we are going to reach a threshold and the weaker ones will get eliminated (yes I know, my site is also amongst the weaker ones).

I was thinking we need a new dimension to all this – a network to manage all these networks, and there are a few out there already, but today I realized that that is only patching up the problem we are about to face. This Web 2.0 and social media/network bubble has started to reach its threshold and I predict that sooner or later it will burst.

I will write another post to say what I mean by this Web 2.0 bubble bursting because this article is getting too long and it becomes difficult with the constraint of time we have in this super fast world that we live in.

Categories
Software Technology

Iphone, Thunderbird + lightning, and ICal

I have an Iphone and simply love it. I also use thunderbird as my default mail client and the lightning plugin as my calendar and I’m on a mac. I searched the Internet for clues to sync the iphone and lightning. Every site and every forum that I came across gave me all these weird solutions like syncing lightning with Google calendar and then sync that with ICal finally syncing that with your Iphone using Itunes.

I decided to go with a different approach. Remember what the wise ones said, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” I just thought of going with a simple solution:

  1. Export Calendar from Thunderbird.
  2. Import it in ICal
  3. Sync with Iphone Using Itunes.

And IT WORKED! Why do people go off looking for complicated, round about ways of doing things?

And for windows,¬† the same should work too. Except you’d be using Outlook instead of ICal. I haven’t tried it. If anyone who has can post a comment here.

Categories
Software

Migrating from Eclipse to Netbeans

continued from “I love Open Source and Freeware”

I have never actually made a move this big this quickly. I guess it all comes with the idea of change. Netbeans is clearly a developers IDE where as eclipse is a bit of an overall IDE. For large scale projects I still think Eclipse is better.

The question is what are the benefits I’m getting with Netbeans? and What am I compromising on?

Well as for the benefits – This will be biased because my requirements at the moment orbit around PHP and web development and I must say I am amazed by the wealth of tools available. I really didnt even have to search alot for this. Netbeans has a PHP IDE that you can download. It has amazing code completion for html and javascript AND css with a little preview window at the bottom – its really a full fledged web development IDE.

Eclipse really lacked this. Even eclipses PDT project didnt provide what netbeans has. The UI seems much pleasant to work with, but eclipse seems to have a much more efficient default layout in its PHP perspective.

I also liked the netbeans update manager – its much more gracious, but limited in comparison to eclipse’s.

But I really feel the pinch in netbeans issue/task management. NOTHING comes close to Eclipse’s Mylyn. Luckily Netbeans does have a connector for bugzilla, but its not that great and you’re just better off opening up your browser to manage all your code issues. But I have to make a choice and I had to choose netbeans because of the tools provided for actual development. Plus at the moment all my projects are small and managed mostly by me, but as my projects grow and more people join I might again have to switch to Eclipse, unless netbeans gets something that can run head to head with Mylyn.

It will take some time for me to get used to Netbeans. I found JMaki and it seems to be a bold step to bring in all the javascript libraries under one roof – seems a bit confusing at first glance, but I will look into that and maybe even give it a chance to show its head up in one of my projects. One thing sucks is that it doesnt support mootools(yet, or maybe there’s a way to get it to work).

@Deepesh Kapadia

Also, just want to say thanks to Deepesh for suggesting Netbeans – it’s improved quite a lot since the last time I used it.

Categories
Software

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

I found this while I was searching for code management software. I will get on implementing this as soon as possible. Software development is a complex task, with numerous methodology and even more components. Its very dynamic and it can span so many different realms, from science to art, to engineering and management. It virtually exercises every muscle of knowledge and learning.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development[1]

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_Manifesto

 

Categories
Software

I love Open Source and Freeware

Have you ever heard “Technology brings us closer”? I know I have, and I know its true. Specifically, I think programmers are at forefront when it comes to sharing and connecting. In what other profession is there hundreds and hundreds of hours of work put in to make something really useful for people that you don’t even know and do it for FREE; and not only do it for free, but make your work available to the public so they can see how you exactly did what you did.

This friends is the world of open source. The reason I love open source is, first of all – everything is free! It also keeps us variety and the power to chose not to be confined to large software enterprises that at times seems to be sucking out our wallets from our back pockets.

Open source software is the only field where FREE is actually fascinating, fantastic, fabulous and fun and not just free. Some of the open source and freeware software is actually 5 to 10 or even more times better than software that you actually pay for. Here are some of the software that I use and absolutely LOVE:

  • Linux – Specifically Ubuntu desktop. I just love this OS. Some people might find it a bit surprising, but given a little more time to mature I may even be able to trade in my mac book pro for an ubuntu notebook! Let me add a little note here, Ubuntu is actually the Linux OS, the user interface is from the GNOME project. Whats really amazing about any linux distros is that you can easily change the interface to something feels right for you. There are other distros that I should mention here ‚Äì Fedora, OpenSuse, Debian etc.. But I like ubuntu, especially the desktop because it just works. I used fedora in 2006 and it was a pain in the rear.
  • Eclipse ‚Äì according to me this is THE best IDE to use. There is a flavour for everything that you want to do. I use the PHP Development Tools (PDT) and it makes my work less work and more fun. I also use the free aptana plugin from time to time for web development.
  • Mozilla Apps ‚Äì Mozilla offers such amazing apps its hard not to talk about them. Firefox is by far the best web browser out there, thunderbird is a fantastic email client ‚Äì few years back I tried to like this email client but I couldn‚Äôt and instead opted for MS Outlook. Now 2 months back (July 09) I stumbled onto thunderbird again and wow does it impress me. I got so impressed I switched from Outlook. I you are fond of the outlook calendar, look no further, thunderbird has an amazing plugin called ‚Äòlightning‚Äô and its got all your calendar needs. I‚Äôm not a big fan of plugins, but this friends is an Ah-mazing plugin ‚Äì it actually feels like a native feature of thunderbird.
  • Apache ‚Äì Apache is by far the number one http web server out there, and I highly doubt that this will ever change!
  • Mootools ‚Äì is a javascript framework that I use and that I think is really convenient. I don‚Äôt know if this is the best one out there because honestly I have not used any other. There are actually many out there. Yahoo even has one out there and has large library with tonnes for features.
  • AVG Free ‚Äì although not open source, it is actually free and I think gets the job done. An excellent (and free) substitute for Norton ‚Äì oh how I hate norton.
  • Zonealarm ‚Äì again this is not open source, but is actually free. It had a few problems with some of their intermedia releases, but now they are back on track.
  • Gimp ‚Äì I love this. Its not as user friendly has photo shop(but then I don‚Äôt find photoshop that user friend to begin with. But being fair, I‚Äôm really a beginner at using advanced image editing software anyway), but its free and it does the job exceptionally well.
  • OpenOffice ‚Äì this is THE best substitute for MS Office. This is an excellent package. After all it does everything that MS Office does and more; you can convert your word files into pdfs ‚Äì thats one feature that first caught my attention. I use MS office on windows since I already had it, but I use OpenOffice on my macbook, since I didn‚Äôt want to pay the extra. You don‚Äôt need to be worried about your friends, co-workers or your boss not being able to open your openoffice files because you can save those files in MS Office formats.
  • Filezilla (ftp client)‚Äì an ftp client and server. Can‚Äôt say anything more about this. I think this one just rocks. If you are using anything other than this for your ftp needs, you should slap yourself haha.

There may be more that I’m using that I’m missing out there. I’ll update the list later. If you have any questions, you can contact me or leave a comment.