Planet TLLTS

O.K., I’ve had my G1 for few days now and have installed some applications for it. Some of the early standouts for me are ShopSavvy, Twidroid(identica and twitter client), Where, Qik, fIRC, ConnectBot, ASTRO, Amazon MP3, Jamendo, Backgrounds, WeatherBug, MetalDetector, Where, AndNav2,TipCalculator and Powermanager. The real standout which is head and shoulders above all others is ShoppSavvy. Basically it lets you scan in the bar code of any item using the camera and then it will go search for the best price either locally or from a web vendor. Absolutely cool. Even iPhone fan boys will get jealous over that. The music store applications for Amazon and Jamendo are both very good. ASTRO is a pretty nice and functional file manager. MetalDetect is very interesting. Somehow the developers have written a metal detector application for Android. I’d love to know how it really works. Where is a very useful as it provides a listing of services (movie times, weather forecast, gas prices, news, traffic reports) for the local area you happen to be in. Qik lets you stream video and have it available from your own page on Qik’s website. AndNav2 is a turn by turn GPS application. Currently it’s not available in Android Market if you’re in the U.S.. I downloaded it directly from it’s website and it seems to be currently setup for European users. This would be great considering the paid GPS navigation app costs $10 a month. Hopefully it will be rolled out to USA users soon. It seems like a really nice application that leverages the openstreetmap project’s work.

So I picked up a slightly used T-mobile G1 phone this week. I’ve been looking to get into the Android pool for some time. The phone was unlocked so I could of went to AT&T if I chose to. The only limitation with using the phone with AT&T is that you won’t get 3G speeds (limited to Edge). I checked the plan prices at AT&T and they only offer the same data plans they have for the iPhone. They won’t let you do pay as you go for the voice plan which I was doing with my old Motorola phone. So with AT&T it costs $70 a month for a voice/data plan. I went to the local T-mobile store and their basic plan is $55 ($29 for voice and $25 for unlimited data). If you have your own device you can do a pay as you go or just sign up for a yearly contract. The advantage of the yearly plan is you won’t get hit with the monthly $5 surcharge (required for pay as you go). The negative with the yearly is that you’ll get hit with a hefty fee ($200) if you leave early. At least you have a choice. Enough with the plans. The phone is great and so far I absolutely love it. HTC just announced 2 new Android phones that T-mobile will be offering very soon. Expect the cost of the G1 to drop below the current $150 price with a two year contract. In fact on Saturday night I was on the T-mobile website and noticed they had the phone listed for $49! The next day it was back up to $149. For $49 the phone is absolute steal. Keep your eyes peeled for that price again. I’ll go into more detail regarding the applications available in coming posts.

Yesterday I decided to stop by Screwattack.com to see if they ever fixed their online players so I can actually watch their content using Firefox under Linux. Well to my surprise I was rewarded at being able to watch the latest Hard News. But Alas, what is this after the show? An Internet Explorer 8 commercial . Before reading on watch that commercial.

Ok, is it just me or is Microsoft thumbing their nose at their entire customer base? “Hey, don’t you just LOOOVE getting those crappy emails with cutesy pictures, political agendas and pass me on chains clogging up your inbox? Want more angels and lolcats and sweet puppy videos to accompany your spam? How about last months internet fad, which has finally made it’s way to your out of touch relatives? Well, look no further, IE 8 is gonna bring it to you.”

So basically what Microsoft is saying is: “Hey, don’t you just hate getting those emails from that interweb surfing lame-o you try your best to avoid? Yeah, well guess what, we are going to make it easier for him to fill up your inbox.” Gee thanks Microsoft. Some how you have perfected the art in giving the world exactly what it doesn’t need: Malware; viruses; crappy, un-inspired software; and now an even easier way for the newbs to brighten our day with useless crap.

I guess what this means is that if you are at all intelligent you should not use Microsoft products. If you are at all technically savy, or even an accomplished computer user by any means, you’re better off with anything but Microsoft products. But don’t worry, no matter how far you run they will always be there, providing the technology to the brainless to ruin your day.

The first annual SouthEast LinuxFest was a wild success. It was everything I had hoped for and more. There we at least 400 people who came out to explore, learn, and celebrate Linux in the GNU/SOUTH. I am still amazed at how big a hit SELF was. I could not be more pleased with how well this first year event went. Everything that I was worried would go wrong, didn't, and everything that I hoped would go right, did. The speakers were awesome, the venue was great, the expo hall was not as woefully small as I had feared, the audio and video worked, the videographers were there on time--and promised CC-by-SA audio and video of the entire event (for the price of batteries and tape) to be made available in both ogg theroa and ogg vorbis format, no one's car was towed, the audio equipment promised for the Dual Core performance was delivered, the DJ was a nice addition, the pre-and after-parties were a blast, the food was delicious, we had more than enough volunteers, the funds were more than sufficient, the t-shirts looked fantastic, we started on time and were only 20 minutes late finishing, the venue for the parties had a one to one penguin to SELF attendee ratio (you'd have to see it to understand it), the BoF sessions just worked, the program guides were perfect, people didn't get lost (we even had our own shuttle service), and most importantly, it felt like a real community event. Scratch that very last part--it WAS a real community event.

Having said that (and re-reading it, and still deciding to post the terrifically long run-on sentence), I think now I realize, that a successful linuxfest isn't about all of the above; (warning: touchy-feeling statement dead ahead) it's about inviting people to belong to a community that shares and celebrates the freedom of GNU/Linux.

Thank you Beth Lynn Eicher, OLF, SCaLE, FLS, Ontario Linux Fest, everyone that help make this event a reality, and most importantly, all of you that came to SELF!

Oh and thanks to my wife too, for letting me grow enough beard for the event to boost my geek-cred.

Did I mention it was fun?

Here are links to more photos from SELF:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/selinuxfest/;

http://jeremysands.com/?p=126;

http://imabug.net/gallery/v/CSCLUG/SELF09/;

http://rlworkman.net/images/SELF-2009/index-all.html;

http://www.nivex.net/gallery/self2009;

http://ahotw.com/gallery/v/linux/SELF2009/;

http://picasaweb.google.com/marielh/SELF2009?fgl=true&pli=1#;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kudzu13/sets/72157619709521423/;

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86185&id=61835474561&ref=mf;

http://www.thelinuxlink.net/~dann/self2009/

I went into the local Sprint store and got to play with a Palm Pre for about 20 minutes. In short it’s a very sweet and functional device. The interface is smooth as silk with a very responsive touch screen. The WebOS operating system is very impressive and will give the iPhone a solid run for it’s money. The phone itself is relatively small but with a big screen covering most of the surface of the phone. There’s a slide out keyboard with pretty small keys. The keyboard is probably the weakest part of the phone. It’s not as nice as the HTC G1’s keyboard but will suffice for simple texting. The real strength of the Palm Pre is the applications. There’s the usual email, web browsing and multimedia apps. They have a custom youtube interface and bunch of streaming video channels specially designed for the Pre. Now from what I’ve read regarding the operating system is that while it’s based on a Linux kernel is mostly closed source. The developer SDK is mostly a big secret at this point with a general roll out in the near future. For me this is a show stopper. I’m leaning towards getting an Android based phone in the near future. Google’s Android OS is much more open with the developer tools readily available for use. Regardless I think the Palm Pre will do very well going head to head with the iPhone. Competition is good and the very least Apple will be forced to improve their products and lower their historically high prices. We have some very interesting times ahead in the smart phone market. The fact that a ton of these products are running Linux under the hood is all the more sweeter.

UCLUG

Topics include:

Dave Yates and Jeremy Sands talk about some of the apps in Linux Journal's Reader's Choice Awards issue; and

SouthEast LinuxFest .

UCLUG podcast in mp3 format;

UCLUG podcast mp3 feed;

UCLUG podcast in ogg format, and

UCLUG podcast ogg feed.

Showmedo is a great video tutorial website with a concentration in open source topics. Want to watch a video introduction to python programming? Want to learn how to use blender or GIMP? Showmedo is the place to go. I’ve setup a channel for the MythTVCast. I just uploaded a short screencast of our discussion on setting up QAM tv capture cards in MythTV. Going forward we’ll add new screencasts to go along with certain topics we plan on covering. Sometimes a a video tutorial gets the point across much easier than words. We’ll try to keep them relative short (30 minutes or less). If you’re a subject expert in any any F/OSS related topic please consider contributing content to showmedo. It’s a great service.

In this month's uncensored call-in show, dave is joined by Jonathan, Dann, Lord Drachenblut, Azimuth, and Threethirty.

Due to the call being uncensored, the call in show has it's own separate feed:

http://lottalinuxlinks.com/podcast/call-in.xml

Be sure to participate in the next call-in show, Friday, July, the 3rd, at 3:10pm Eastern by calling 724-444-7444, and using the Call ID 15880 at the prompt, or just click here: lll call-in show.