Your Computer Is Going Away (Graphic)
via smashingapps.com
Chartered Accountant, Technophile, IT consultant, web 2.0 enthusiast, Mobile technology fan, Travels to drive,
Loves Life and lives every moment...
We know what we are, but know not what we may be...
This is not exactly another one of those reviews of the iPad, an unboxing photo gallery or even a real iPad mandatory post . And, this is a very boring text only post. Be advised that it is boring to read a text only post. Go here for a more interesting mandatory post on the iPad, atleast it's got a photo in there! This is a post for all those people who really don't need an iPad, or atleast think so. They always say that a product so good that it can develop a need, is sure to be successful. I really don't sit at my desk and use my computer anymore. Instead I take the laptop around or my mobile phone's always around for me to be online 24x7. I look at the iPad to replace internet access on my mobile phone at home, and on my netbook at home. There are times when I don't want to boot up my computer just to search for something on Google. Of course, I use the hibernate mode to minimize time taken to get to my desktop on my netbook, But its still not fast enough when I want to search on wikipedia for a movie I'm watching, or for a book I'm reading or a game I might be playing. Or I just wanted to check that mail I had been waiting for. A Technology so sufficiently disguised that you don't realize that you are using it. An iPad would fit the bill perfectly. I just pick it up, search for what I was looking for and put it down. An iPad creates/extends the market for tablet devices. Because, if Apple sells something, they create a market for it. Even if noone needs it in the first place. Why should I get a iPad instead of a tablet PC? An iPad is much more closer to a mobile phone than a computer in many ways. By not supporting multitasking, the iPad actually lets you be more productive and focused on the task at hand. The App store is a big enough reason by itself for wanting to get the iPad. Any device is only powerful as the application that runs on it and you have a huge library of powerful apps at your disposal with the iPad. It is true that other tablet PCs have OSes which actually support millions of applications. These applications are more suited to your computer, not for a mobile phone. Does an iPad replace the mobile phone? Its not really replacing your mobile phone. But it's just replacing your mobile phone at home as an internet device, a gaming device, an email client, a YouTube viewer and lots more. One, its got a big screen which is meant to let you do all without squinting at the tiny screen, or scrolling around for 10 minutes for every 5 lines that you read. The iPad might not let you make phone calls or type out entire documents or work on long excel sheets at work. Why should it replace your laptop/PC? The iPad is meant to be used as an device when you really don't want to boot up your computer or are just plain too lazy to walk up to get to it. One day, the iPad might actually replace your laptop/PC/netbook. Hook up a keyboard and it is ready to do that even sooner. If it can replace your ebook reader, double up as your youtube viewer, check your emails, access social networking sites and much more, then its almost ready to replace a normal internet user. But you still need your PC/netbook/laptop for heavy duty stuff. You'd still need it to write that last bit of code, or touch up on that photo with the full potential of the desktop Photoshop. You cannot access your command line on it, look at files and folders stored on it and its pretty much stuck with the same OS for life (Yes, it would get updates, but the OS is still the same) And as with all Apple products, No Flash! I don't see it replacing my laptop soon. But I really need the iPad just so that I could use it as....an iPad. But what do I really use flash for? A few rare websites, and of course Youtube. But iPad has a dedicated player for Youtube, so that irons out the "flashy" problem. Why did I write this post? Because everybody's writing about it. Because if I don't, I might not be allowed to blog anymore. No tech blog is complete without a post on the iPad. It's the most important invention after personal computers. And it's been long since I've spent so much time typing out such a lengthy post. A post on the iPad most probably needs a photo of it to break the monotony. But I thought I might as well put up a link to do just that! This post is not really complete. But I had to put it up because there's another post which needs to come up real fast. Subscribe to the RSS feed, or just keep visiting until the post comes up.
The best way to try out a new OS would be to run it off a USB drive. Now you can run the early build of the Chromium OS off a USB. Just grab the Chromium OS build from here and follow instructions. If you'd rather not go to all that trouble, you can try running Chrome OS off a virtual machine like I did. The folks at engadget have even put up a video as to how it works. The secret behind the builds is all about creating a build. If you'd rather create the build yourself then go to Google's build instructions page for the Chromium OS. Running Google Chrome off the USB makes it run faster, lets you have a real feel of the OS. All you need is a bit of time and patience.
The open source chromium OS on which Google Chrome OS is based on, was launched yesterday and soon many torrents were teeming with the Developer preview edition of the Chromium OS. I tried out Chromium from gdgt who had files for running them off virtualbox, (virtual machine software from Sun Microsystems) . The Chrome OS img itself was around 300 MB compressed and I had to download Virtualbox as well. Gdgt requires you to sign up before you download and you can use your facebook account to accelerate the process(Though, in my opinion they do ask for a lot more fb rights than actually required) If you do not know what the chrome OS is all about, watch the video below: If you have not setup a virtual machine before, try using this link here for a complete guide.
Set up Dropbox (http://getdropbox.com) and installed it on all my laptops. Now that should keep them all synced. I always had trouble carrying around files on a USB drive. Especially when I think that USBs are meant to run operating systems and not to carry files. Now that lets me access all my synced files from anywhere in the world, not just my laptops. But then its a bit of redundancy. Why would I need to sync files across machines, when I carry my operating system with me? Dropbox is easy and lets you sync upto 2GB for free. Just download Dropbox and signup with an email address and password. The dropbox folder inside your My documents folder is just another folder, except that its synced across all your linked computers. Still haven't tried Dropbox for Ubuntu, which reminds me..I'll need make a post on the Ubuntu installation as well.
The new google mobile app for symbian brings the google desktop to the mobile phone. Well, almost. It still does not index the contents of your mobile phone, but its a step in the right direction.
The mobile application which starts up at the tap of the backspace key, allows you to load the google search page interface which is linked to the gmail mobile and google maps app, google news, picasa page and few other google services. It still does not include reader in its list which is surprising considering that google reader is one of the finest aggregators out there.
The application is something like a google services control center on your symbian mobile. A bit of android in your symbian?
Read more of the new release on the official google mobile blog or download the application here
Geek Chart shows you where you shares most of the content. You can find thunderror's shared content on twitter, stumbleupon, delicious and loads of other web2.0 sites. Geek chart currently supports a select few of these popular sites and makes a pie chart showing where you share the most and the least. Not surprisingly, twitter comes tops my share list. Try out your geek chart and let us know where you share...Just sign up and surrender your usernames with the most popular social share sites. Thunderror's Geek Chart
You're tired of windows and all its travails and decide to look around for alternative operating systems (read open source!). What flavor of Linux do you chose, if you've never used Linux or any other operating system other than windows? We recommend that you try Slax on your USB flash drive or a CD. That way you'll always have your boring Windows platform to come back to, if you ever chose to (or even if you had to!!) Before we download Slax, lets take a look at what Slax is all about. Slax is a Linux operating system build based on slackware linux. You can read more about it at slax.org or on the wikipedia page here. Linux as you might have heard is open source and as a result of which comes in a variety of shapes and sizes such as Ubuntu, Redhat, Knoppix and a hundred others built by people like you and me around the world. BTW, you would find a lot of links on this page considering that this post was not written for geeks alone. We tried the Slax installation on a 4GB USB drive, although it shouldn't be too much of a hassle running it from a 1GB USB drive either. But as always, bigger is better. Slax also gives you an option to run completely from RAM (*really fast!) although you need to load it from your USB or CD in the first place. Head to the Slax website to download the slax installation package for the USB or the CD as you may want to. The first roadblock you may face is the installation file itself. Its available either as an ISO or as TAR package. (no! no Zip files or installers!). Most software for the linux operating system itself is packaged as a TAR package. Now a TAR package isn't too different from an average Zip file and you can extract if you have the latest version of your File extraction software (if you run into trouble extracting it into a folder, use google!) Copy the contents of the folder to the USB drive (In case of the CD image, just burn the ISO onto any CD). Ensure the first bootable device on your BIOS is set to your USB or CD as required. Now plug in the USB/pop in the CD and reboot. Now if everything goes fine, it should bootup to load Slax. Linux boots up on the default root account. Connect your PC to the network cable and it should pick up the internet connection just as easily. If not, click on the select IP and click ok to associate the IP with the system. Load Konqueror which is the default browser for the KDE shell(which is the desktop environment for linux; similar to what the explorer means to Windows) go and search for all those software which are available ready to use as slax modules here. You just need to download and click on the files to install them, which you would find installed in your start menu. You can find a few screenshots here. Now come the gripes, I miss using the Wifi on the HP Pavillion laptop and no matter what, slax did not recognise my wifi card. Of course I was too lazy to pick up an NDISWrapper for my Wifi card's windows drivers. That should make any windows driver work with Linux and the same goes for Slax.
Get your copy of Tour de Flex and jump start your Flex experience. Learn with easy examples. Anyway, its better than looking at your boring HTML help! Oh! You'd better get some AIR before you do that!
