The meeting was kindly hosted by the folks over at the Google Sydney office, which was an experience in itself. It was certainly the most open and personalised set of offices that I had ever seen. I’ll let a picture speak for itself. (Why yes, that is a tire swing there)

The talk was given by Dr Silvia Pfeiffer about HTML 5′s video and audio capabilities – which are, needless to say, extremely powerful. The talk inspired me to implement HTML 5 video support in WIPUP, and for those that are interested in the talk, she gave at LCA too and is available here.

But what was more interesting was the people. They were your usual ragtag group of geeks.

How unexciting to meet such regular people.

Related posts:

1. G’day, mate!

But this post isn’t about KDE 4.6 and nor is it about roms and galaxys. It’s about Kontact 2, part of KDEPIM 4.6 (which is still considered unstable by upstream) and how to achieve the state of PIM-zen which everybody should achieve once in their lives. The state of PIM-zen, for those too lazy to click, is the state where your PIM data (calendar/todo/contacts/feeds/etc) is accessible through any digital medium, be it your desktop’s PIM applications, a website visited from a remote location, or your mobile phone’s bundled PIM-suite.

Syncing your Calendar and events

I’m not going to talk about syncing email, as that has been covered countless times elsewhere. So let’s start with syncing the calendar, as it is the next most prevalent in use. Google phones unsurprisingly sync well to Google accounts – and given that Google accounts have a web-based frontend too, this kills two birds with one stone in our “access everywhere” requirement of PIM-zen. So our solution is going to be Kontact 2 <–Sync–> Google’s PIM Suite <–Sync–> Android device.

Kontact 2 is completely Akonadi based. In comparison to Kontact 1, where there was a makeshift Akonadi-resource wrapper which you could add to harness Akonadi as a data source, Kontact 2 only uses Akonadi-supported sources for your data. Luckily Akonadi makes it easy to connect to data sources, and so there is a specialised Akonadi-GCal-resource which you can add.

To do this, just right click on the bottom left box in Korganizer which holds the calendar sources, click “Add Calendar”, and select “Akonadi Google Calendar Resource”.

To get the resource, you may need to install the akonadi-googledata package. After clicking OK, all that remains is that you enter in your Google username (your email), and your Google account password. It should then start syncing and working flawlessly. Your Android phone can then sync to your Google account’s calendar.

However GCal is very buggy it seems as it isn’t unlikely that you’ll be having problems such as unable to authenticate or unable to grab calendar data. After scouring the web here are a few potential solutions to problems you might have:

• Add the resource through the Akonadi configuration, not through Korganizer’s Akonadi wizard.
• Ensure you have suffixed @gmail.com (even if you have an @googlemail.com address) to your username.
• Make sure you don’t use special characters (non-alphanumeric) in your password.
• Use the latest version of libgcal (>0.9.3 should be good enough)
• Remove any older version of libgcal.
• If you are behind a proxy, set it properly in KDE’s system settings -> Network -> Proxy, if not, ensure it is “Connect to internet directly”. (OpenSuse’s defaults to using env variables)
• Ensure you have ca-certificates package installed, and the certificate from https://l.google.com/ to the list of accepted certs.
• Have at least one event in the Google Calendar or it won’t sync (bug).
• Sign out all other account sessions as detailed here.
• … and of course, make sure Akonadi is running. (akonadictl start)

If it doesn’t work, you may want to stop akonadiserver, then start it with akonadictl start &> log in order to get a logfile. You can then poke around to see exactly where it failed. #akonadi on freenode may be able to help.

If it still doesn’t work, don’t despair (it didn’t work for me either!), as there is an alternative sync. The alternative uses CalDAV, as opposed to directly using Google’s Data API. To use it, just select “DAV groupware resource” from the wizard from the same screenshot shown above. However when it asks for you to pick the groupware server, click Cancel. This will prompt you to enter the details manually. Now follow the instructions by Google for SunBird for setting up a CalDAV resource, and as shown below in the screenshot, then after pressing OK things should starting syncing fine.

Finally, we should note that there might be some data loss, as Google Calendar doesn’t implement all of the data fields, such as attendees to events. Another thing you might want to note is that exporting your existing KOrganizer calendar into ical/ics and then importing into Google Calendar may not work, as KOrganizer doesn’t follow the ical/ics specs properly. If you are exporting and are manually modifying the ical/ics file such that it works, ensure you define the timezone, otherwise chaos will ensue :D

Syncing your contacts

Android has, just like Calendar, a built-in autosync with your Google account’s contacts. Akonadi also has a Google Contacts resource, which you may use in similar fashion to the Google Calendar resource described above. Unfortunately it doesn’t work with me, and so I’m currently in the process of debugging it with Savago in #akonadi. YMMV, and I don’t know any good alternative to syncing this.

Syncing your todo lists

This is a pain. First off it should be plainly stated that Google’s Android does not have a stock to-do application. Google’s own laughable implementation of a to-do webapp in GMail is – well, I would use the most derogatory adjectives I could think of to describe it, but that would just mislead you into thinking that it is possible to quantify the horribleness of it (which it isn’t) – oh, where was I? Oh yes, Google’s to-do webapp doesn’t allow you to access it via ical or any sane format, is missing a ton of useful meta-tags which some people might want, and so you should probably scratch out trying to sync over Google’s to-do webapp.

The options do you have are limited to what exists on the Android marketplace to read your todo lists. The two major ones are Astrid Tasks and RememberTheMilk, both of which are very good. Let’s cover RTM first.

The biggest downside with RTM is that in order to use the Android application for it (which is very good), you have to be a RTM Pro user, which costs 25$ a year, which is actually worth it if you are really dependent on task lists. Alternatively you could use their mobile barebones webapp which looks ugly but gets the job done. Their main webinterface is probably the only webinterface I actually really enjoy using, but the downside is that you cannot interact with your tasks via KTodo – you get only readonly access via an iCal file (note that you can also use a version where your todo items are converted to events in your iCal file for use through the KOrganizer interface). So the final setup goes somewhat like this RTM Android App <– Push/scheduled syncs –> RTM Website and/or Google Calendar <– Read-only iCal file –> KTodo. It should be noted that RTM supports syncing with your Google Calendar as well, so that’s an added plus if you want to use that interface. Note that there is also a RTM Plasmoid, which just adds icing to the cake.

The alternative is Astrid Tasks. Whilst interfacewise a little more clunky it still does get things done. It can sync with a “space” on the online saas Producteev, which in turn allows you to manage it from there. It also does a two-way sync with Google’s to-do webapp, but is known to be buggy, YMMV. However from there it doesn’t seem to have a way to sync with KTodo. Luckily, in a twisted sort of way, it does allow you to sync to RTM via a now unofficial sync (due to RTM’s policies of not allowing other companies to make added profit from their system), and using RTM you can then do the same sync as above. However if you use Astrid Tasks even with syncing to RTM, you don’t need to be a RTM Pro user and hence everything is free. Your options are therefore Astrid Tasks Android App <–> Producteev/Google, or Astrid Tasks Android App <–> RTM <– Read-only iCal file –> KTodo.

There is a third alternative – GTDAgenda. This webapp closely follows the original principles of Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s a really powerful tool and comes with both a mobile site and Android application too. The only downside is that they are rather expensive and their free version is rather stripped down. Even when stripped down it does seem a little overkill for my needs, but it might be different for you.

My personal reccomendation is to just go with RTM.

Syncing your RSS feeds

Syncing your RSS feeds are a little tricky now that Akregator’s Google Reader sync is unmaintained and broken. Also Google doesn’t have a stock feeds application (why, oh why, Google, do you leave out the basics!) – update: actually it turns out they have recently published one. This pretty much limits you to running any Android app which syncs with Google Reader (there are a few out there, I personally use Pulse) – or you could just access Google Reader’s mobile application, which is really attractive for a mobile site I must say.

In the meantime, get somebody hacking on Akregator and fix that sync plugin!

… and reach your state of PIM-zen!

I hope that this guide has been helpful to those wanting to achieve that perfect sync across all their devices. Any tips and tricks I missed out please let me know in the comments.

No related posts.

Chrome OS is Google’s attempt at an operating system, and can be described as a browser in a box. It looks identical to its namesake and contains little more. The interface is simply a browser window with tabs for separate “applications”, it’s applications are naught more than websites (or in true 2.0 lingo – “web apps”), and just to ensure that the user is limited as to what they can do, the filesystem is read-only. In other words – the Chrome is good for one thing and one thing only: surfing the web.

Why then, with statistics showing internet usage globally leveling out and laptops being introduced to more and more children, would a generation understanding the capabilities of machines be content with such a handicap as Chrome OS? It’s known that “simple sells”, but too simple?

The answer lies with the market that Chrome OS is truly aiming at: SMEs. With the Go Google initiative the next step is to provide the hardware that supports it. Most uses of a laptop in corporate environments are limited to document processing and web research. Given that they choose the specs of the computers, Chrome OS is able to provide this at a bargain. So when management has to give Joe down at accounting a laptop for his work, he doesn’t need to bother about licensing, cost, endless software debugging and maintenance – but simply throw (yep, SSDs!) a Chrome laptop at him. Data redundancy, “software” upgrades and whatever else the cloud brings is an added bonus. Yeah – it’s not a hard choice. It’s cheaper, gets the job done, and it truly is a “work” laptop.

The objective isn’t to throw it into the market as a whole or start from the housewives and grandparents with such a simple laptop but instead the objective is to turn it into an industry standard – an industry standard that works best when companies have Gone Google. Most SMEs don’t care about the drawbacks of using a cloud-based system either – this makes the costs of moving to such a standard minimal. Both sides win. This approach into the market is only one that Google can employ – and is the reason why Chrome OS can break in successfully compared to others like Moblin, even though Moblin has the same simplicity and speed.

Then of course some of the less computer literate (which is the majority of the world, unless you live under a rock) don’t mind using it either. Chrome OS makes the netbook what it should be – a netbook, and schwoop we have another player in the market. In a nutshell. The trick behind this is the frictional costs. The frictional costs of moving to such a system is minimal. I say this as a relative term in comparison to the costs of switching from a cloud-based system.

The conclusion is not that Chrome OS is going to take over the OS market. No – especially in large firms the costs of moving to such a system is unquestionable. However this approach will definitely break the barrier between lightweight computer users and Linux-based OSes. Whether or not this is a good thing for existing Linux platforms is still unknown and free for speculation.

Of course, in the future when our needs for computers far exceed this, Chrome OS is definitely not the choice for that generation – but then again, Google has plenty of time to work towards that!

No related posts.

I have a Google Wave account. I’ve had it for a couple weeks now and have had time to familiarise myself with it enough to write a review.

In a nutshell, Google Wave is a pimped combination of email, instant messaging, and live document collaboration. It tries to combine these three functions into an interface that is easily accessible on the web. I think it’s best to split my review into these respective parts.

First I will talk about its function as email. If there’s something I’m really against, it’s unnecessary function duplication. I would like to stress my use of the word “unnecessary” here, because function duplication as an innovation strategy is actually incredibly good. Google wave is the perfect example of “unnecessary” function duplication for its use as email. It provides no extra benefit at the moment. It is simply what GMail is except inside a smaller window and formatted like a chatlog. But is it so bad? Now there are still a very limited number of bots you can use (small extensions that allow you to insert interactive “widgets” or manipulate the conversation in some way) but as time passes, I predict the number of bots will increase, and thus really make Google Wave’s use in email very, very different. One example is the “yes, no” widget, which allows anybody in the conversation to place themselves in the “yes”, “no” or “maybe” category – useful when organising an event.

Am I willing as a customer to give up my email for Wave? No. In the future? Maybe.

Instant messaging – it’s absolutely terrible. I’ve seen the Windows Live Messenger program do better. Inconvenient, clunky, extremely distracting (real time typing!), and gets confusing real fast. With shortcuts it’s barely manageable, but without, it’s a lost cause. Once you get more than 10 people in a single conversation (even with 5 people it’s absolutely terrible) you’d wish IRC were more mainstream.

Live document collaboration – admittedly I haven’t tested this as extensively as the previous ones but personally I wouldn’t go near Wave’s “live collaboration” with a 10 foot pole. Allow me to use an analogy here – let’s say you were a designer. A digital graphics designer. I can guarantee you that anybody doing this as a profession will not touch the computer unless they have a superbly clear idea of what they want in their head. Even if this were the case, I can again guarantee that discussions with other designers about their ideas in any collaborative environment or even with themselves would be done with their hands, a writing utensil and something to make marks on. Like “paper and pencil”, you know? It’s this process that Google is trying to digitize. Admittedly sometimes technology helps – but for things like these nothing beats face to face, or at least a good conversation over the phone.

Ok – but what about the application itself? It’s quite stable on my Firefox 3.5.something on Gentoo amd64. QtWebkit doesn’t display it properly (KHTML? Not a chance). It’s speedy up until I try to use the playback feature on a conversation, and I’ve been in a Wave with over 100 people with … well, yes, a lot of lag, but it displays and still can be used if you’re a very patient person. Google Wave seems to be crossing the uncanny valley in a way I haven’t seen before – there is a form of “window management”, including docking, minimising, maximising and restoring. There are very many desktop-like effects, such as their interesting implementation of a scrollbar (think touchscreen device) – and many toolbars littered here and there, but overall it puts me off more than attracts.

However an important point to notice is that Google Wave is still not much more than a poorly implemented clone of what the desktop world has refined over the years. The web was designed as a standardised freeform canvas to present information, which is why websites are not desktop applications and desktop applications are websites. Scrollbars? Drag and drop? Right click? I’m sorry – when was the last time you used a proper application? Admittedly Google Wave is composed of three main areas as introduced through their loooooong video – one of them is to do with an API. This obviously means that there’s nothing preventing a future implementation of a Wave Client, but until then, Google Wave shall continue to receive my polite disgust.

No related posts.

The question I’ve been asking myself is: will I use Google Wave? Initially, I would say “sure why not? It’s revolutionary” – but truth be told, I’ve overestimated the hype.

Wave is a pimped web application. The question is not whether the web was built for this technology, because advances like this never are. The question is neither if I’d enjoy integrating Wave’s API into my blog and related websites. The question is if I can realistically see myself using Wave in my workflow?

Wave is a way to communicate and collaborate. At the moment I do all my communication through my blog, instant messaging, and my phone. I collaborate through version control, mailing lists, and Google Docs. Wave will not replace any single one of those, except perhaps mailing lists. Personally, and I’m sure this applies to others too, Wave is not something I will use to replace another in my workflow – instead it will add a completely new, unrelated workflow.

But what is this workflow? I see it in document collaboration for businesses. But honestly, I don’t see it in much else. I don’t see it in social networking (if I even used it). I don’t see it replacing any form of instant messaging. And I especially don’t see it invading the web with its API. The web is changing, yes, and changing fast. A website is a blank canvas that the user will accept anything and everything they see on it. This is very different from desktop applications – where a single out of place UI widget will provoke suspicion from the user. However despite the unlimited number of things you can do to a webpage – you simply can’t bond two of them together. You can’t make the user feel like its an integrated environment. Heck, sometimes it’s hard to make a single website look integrated. This is what I believe is the biggest setback, and the biggest weakness of what Wave is trying to achieve. This isn’t said from a selfish web-developer point of view, it’s coming from a person who uses the web just as much as the desktop.

What do you see Wave in? Will you surf the Wave?

No related posts.

Now is the time to see what exactly is going on.

My feelings in a nutshell

• Would I buy such a product? If it were cheap (100 dollars or so), yes.
• I feel Google is harming open-source.
• Cloud computing is very important to me for accessibility and synchronisation.
• We cannot fight, and should not fight.

The story behind it

The first point is easy to justify and I do believe this is very agreeable. This is an area of the markt people have always looked towards with an expectation of a “trustworthy” brand, and Google has just provided that to them. People will buy for this OS.

To a company, Google is probably executing its marketing strategy in the most effective way possible. They use a product-orientated approach, making the product first then selling it to the market – or so it seems. Google knows two things: 1) They have craploads of data, and 2) They own (pretty much) the biggest mass marketing device in the world. However they do know that even though they “own” this realm, they cannot control it. It’s like a pet – you own but cannot control it.

They way you control it is by feeding it. Such is the nature of open-source development. However Google is able to turn open-source into money by producing a good percentage of the product before open-sourcing it. This allows Google to keep the leash on the project. You developers aren’t building the product side by side – no: you are doing the grunt work that turns a framework into something consumers will love – something with the name Google slapped onto it.

Let’s move onto my third feeling. This is because of a trend I have noticed over time. Computers is no longer about being in full control of your data – it’s about being in full control of your data no matter where you are. Cloud computing sorts this out – it’s no wonder Google’s objective is “to be the hub through which all the world’s information passes through“. Sorry guys, but the fact is that most consumers want this. The only time they won’t is when the company providing it has a bad reputation – but Google? No, Google’s never been evil have they? Not to the average joe they haven’t. It’s the average joe that changes the workflow – it’s the average joe that makes such a way of working part of your daily routine.

You see, Chrome isn’t about making an operating system to do useful stuff – Chrome is all about changing people’s workflow to become web-centric. Instead of moving into the desktop market, what Google is doing is moving consumers into the web market.  Why do you think it’s named Chrome after their browser? It saves on the advertising costs. You advertise the OS, you advertise the browser. Google is pushing ahead HTML 5 specifications to redefine what the web is capable of, and their browser Chrome going to be the biggest, baddest boy in the playground that knows the meaning of the word “compatibility” backwards. Advertise them both at the same time – what you get are people getting the “wow” experience Google can provide with all its toolkits online from the browser, and making it easy as pie to integrate it into how they work. It’s not because Google Docs is simply an application that allows you to edit documents online, it’s because it’s a shared, accessible, compatible, synchronised alternative.

We cannot and should not fight.

Yes. My last point is so awesome it deserves its own special section.

You cannot fight once a market leader has made a choice on a product/system. We saw it with Windows and we may very well see it again. (I assume you have all seen Google Wave?) Instead we have to understand the market. What does the market want? How do we provide for it?

Now, I am a KDE user myself but what I see as major areas for Linux and DEs in general to focus on are:

• Plasmoids (in KDE at least) – this is a stepping stone to integrate new technologies and the web into the desktop workflow
• Provision of private clouds, complying with open-standards – for private, secure and PERSONALISED (imagine giving users the freedom to shape their cloud environment) mobility and synchronisation
• The social desktop
• The semantic desktop

Am I right, am I crazy, have I missed out stuff?

Shower me with your thoughts please.

No related posts.

That’s right, my conspiracy theory about Google (orignally posted a good month back) has come true, and it’s going to be out there around late 2010.

Brief summary: Google is making an operating system (Linux-based too) with help from the open-source community that focuses on getting the user online and into a browser as quick as possible. The browser is now the ultimate tool on the system. It is currently mainly meant for stuff like netbooks (note this is a separate project from Google Android) but will apparently also be able to provide a good experience for any desktop setup.

Since it’s too late to grimace at Google during their drawing board sessions, I like to ask myself what would an OS be in a time when many of our activites are web-centric.

Most of the main problems I outlined for Google in my conspiracy theory was how they could convice people to change their workflows. Apparently Google has decided to give them an operating system. This interface can easily be optimised to make it feel natural to shift their workflow completely into what they can do in a browser, some tabs and the new shabang HTML 5 will come with.

I took a look at Moblin, another netbook Linux-based OS – one thing instantly popped through my head: this doesn’t look like any window manager, it looks like a website or single application. Something you might expect similar to MythTV. (If I am wrong please correct me).

The first decision I would make on designing a UI for Google’s purposes is not to have any start menu. Something similar to Apple’s dock with modifications (also with an auto-hide) would be great for optimising screen real estate. I would also integrate what I now see as KDE Plasmoids as part of the entire interface (as in within applications itself too instead of only the desktop shell). I would also ask myself what applications could be and should be replaced by web applications. Such examples are email, document editing, chatting, and social networking. What could not and should not be are graphics and multimedia editors, games, and system management tools. It seems very much now that we can split our activities into 2: if you want to make technology, do it offline. If you want to use technology, do it online.

Personally, I can easily now see how easily I can adapt my workflow to this internet-centric pattern.

What about you? What do you expect from Google’s OS?

No related posts.

Now, I might not like Windows, but that doesn’t mean that Microsoft can only create crappy products. I’ve played Halo, and it’s fun too :) So I decided to try out Bing – this means only using it for all of my web searches throughout the week- and here I am with my review.

Bing is stressed as a “decision engine”, not a “search engine”. It’s meant to be able to provide useful information to help you solve tough decisions, instead of only being able to give you information on a subject – or at least that’s how their little beta introduction portrayed it to me.

I started with some basic searches – those searches that are meant to find out information. Google normally does pretty darn well on these by throwing me right at Wikipedia – you can’t go wrong there, but Bing apparently did. Searching up simple economics terminology (I had an economics exam) would throw me at past year economic sources, news articles, everything – except for “what it means“. A quick poke through some keywords proved that Bing didn’t use their search as a command line – in other words you could do fancy thing like `define: foo` or `"foo" -bar`. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you probably aren’t using Google effectively for your searches. Horrible first impression.

However, certain things did jump out, such as little tooltips that extend on the description, as well as more relevant searches and “links on results page”, oh, and a bunch of new fancy options on the Image search, as well as a load-on-demand thing that’s really nifty that you’ll just have to see for yourself. However, it’s no use saying how good the tech is, it’s better to see how useful the tech is.

So I then decided to see how good Bing was at being a “decision engine”. I threw a couple difficult questions I had floating around:

• What career/university path would be suitable for me?
• I have a hand condition called `hyperhidrosis`, how do I solve it?
• How should I fix the exceptions “claims_sig_not_found” that a random guy’s OpenID library kept throwing at me?
• How can I sync my Windows Mobile phone with Kontact on Linux?
• What is the best picture to use for “Bing” on my blog post, seeing as the image keeps on changing on Bing.com.

As you can see, the questions were varied from being hypothetical, technical, specific, broad-knowledge, and finally image-based … respectively.

What career/university path would be suitable for me?

The first question was initially answered by a collection of “buy our free careers advice” websites. Little scams they were, that wasn’t too good. However some deeper poking found some good personality tests and career questionnaires.

Did it answer the question in the end? No.

Was I expecting it to? No.

I have a hand condition called `hyperhidrosis`, how do I solve it?

This was a pretty technical question. Hyperhidrosis is a condition where you sweat profusely in certain areas of your body – mine being hands and feet. It is normally triggered by certain materials, foods, sounds, etc. It was medical advice I was looking for. Bing fared pretty well on this one. Apparently I found quite a lot of cures, everything from botox injections, surgical lasers burning off my nerves, 30 minute soaks in baking soda to giving yourself a mild electrocution with a 12 volt battery. Needless to say I decided to leave the electrocution to a last resort.

Unfortunately it also enjoyed giving a bunch of scam websites too – but nevertheless those were inevitable to pop up, and after discarding those I did find some really good websites on the subject. So good that I actually did try soaking my hands for 30 minutes in a concentrated mixture of water and … uh, toothpaste – no baking soda. With a quick air-dry I managed to witnes instantaneous crystallisation on the back of my hand, and enjoyed a good 12 minutes of sweat free life.

Did it answer the question in the end? Yes.

Am I going to try out the cures? Maybe later.

How should I fix the exceptions “claims_sig_not_found” that a random guy’s OpenID library kept throwing at me?

This was an interesting one. I had used an OpenID library somebody else had coded for a PHP framework. However no matter how much I inserted traceback calls and tried to debug it- it kept on failing spectacularly. A quick test on my remote server showed it wasn’t a “it’s just you” problem, and several fresh installs failed the same way. The problem was, I didn’t know the name of the guy who coded it, it was somewhat outdated, and not exactly the most popular library in the world.

It did decently- up to the stage where I actually found out the guy’s name, actual email, and…well – it seems as though either Bing is living under a rock or nobody else except me and the creator uses this library. I’ve fallen back to using janrain’s OpenID PHP library, and that works flawlessly.

Did it answer the question? If the answer is “don’t ask the question”, then yes.

Am I happy with the answer? Yes.

How can I sync my Windows Mobile phone with Kontact on Linux?

I have a Windows Mobile phone, and I want to sync my PIM (personal information management – like calendar, todo, contacts, notes, alarms etc) with my computer. Turns out that the only thing Bing can say is that whatever exists is either outdated or non compatible with KDE4 and Kontact.

Did it answer the question? Failed horrendously. Stupid Bing. Not even a glimmer of hope.

Am I happy with the answer? What answer?

What is the best picture to use for “Bing” on my blog post, seeing as the image keeps on changing on Bing.com.

I’ll let the picture it chose speak for itself. The rest were even worse.

Summary:

Is Bing comparable to Google? No. Realistically speaking, in a tie, Google will win.

What’s my idea on what would make a search engine so much more useful? An option to allow people to say “I am willing to spend money” or “I am not willing to spend money”.

No related posts.

Google has recently unveiled at a developer preview their new product “Google Wave”. If you have not yet read about this, or watched the introduction video available on their webpage, I suggest you click here to go there now, and watch it.

If you have heard of it, and if you’ve watched the demo, you will be amazed. Not only have Google come up with a killer product, they’re going to open-source it, and developers will have access to the most amazing resources to produce the most amazing web applications possible. If you’re still reading and you haven’t watched the video, please go watch the video first.

Right – so the question is, why, especially if it’s open-sourced, are you against Google?

Try to look at it from this perspective. At this moment, we have three main operating systems, Linux, Mac and Windows, each with desktop applications built to cater for the underlying system. You might prefer one more than the other, and thus the more popular ones get more applications built, developers move to develop on the platform, and when the developers move, most users don’t realise this, but it’s where the developers like to go that determines what will progress and ultimately be used by you regular folks.

Right. So it’s a bit stupid to have a lot of competing technologies, and it’s obviously better to have one uniform system that just works ™ for all. That’s why we start to depreciate older technologies, merge together technologies, define standards, etc to make desktop systems more integrated, etc. This is well seen in stuff like KDE, GNOME, etc.

However, Google’s seen something a lot of others have been blinded about. The web is the only cross-platform, standardised system that exists. So whilst Microsoft, Linux and Apple go and fight their differences, Google, armed with its existing monopoly in the search engine system (yeah, indexes the internet, nice one) decides to take over the internet.

Here’s where you roll your eyes. But I’m not joking. Allow me to explain.

Since nobody can actually own the internet, Google has managed to think up another way of doing it. The plan starts with creating a lot of “uncanny” web applications. The uncanny valley was a concept used to describe the point at which one’s appreciation of technology due to its advancement changed to disgust because the technology became too “humanoid”. Eg: a humanoid robot only gets so awesome until it starts look identical to you, and better too, and with a hidden flamethrower. When used in the context of web apps, this is where the website’s interface mimics that of a desktop application. Like, for example: Google Docs.

This impresses a lot of users really quickly, as it allows them to do what was only previously possible if the software was installed on the system instead anywhere around the world with an internet connection and with a decent browser.

…and then Google starts releasing web APIs and toolkits to allow developers to take advantages of the systems it has created. This sounds really good, until you think about what else Google is doing.

Google releases their web browser, Google Chrome. Google Chrome is a breakthrough in certain technologies, allowing separate processes per tab, and support for some seriously cool javascript, ajax, whatever. Google’s aim in Chrome is “to show what the web is capable of”, pushing the limits, etc. With this browser, users can experience the best in uncanny websites, hence all functionality of your average desktop application can now, actually be done right in your browser. Again, Google Docs is a perfect example of this. Don’t believe me? Why don’t you try Photoshop in your browser, right now.

Once Google has a place in the browser market, they have every right to start sticking in their own ideas into the new HTML 5 standards. Now Google has their arsenal to define exactly what the browser is capable of. Together with their existing web toolkits and demos on the amazing stuff that is capable, who wouldn’t be happy to oblige?

Well, nobody. Google has made it so easy for the average person to access all of these great features. Even though Google Sites is a complete joke for web developers, for Joe down the street who can’t spell out HTML to save his life, Google Sites is amazing.

So people start switching. Because the technology behind it, too, is so impressive, developers start switching. In the end, what we now have is in effect “an operating system right in your browser“. Or as one person in IRC put it, another layer to depreciate the coding layers below it. Soon we will not need desktop applications any more, and everything will be done on the web. (of course there are also technical implications about this, like what will happen to the rest of the programming languages)

No, the web is still just through one browser you say, it’s not at all useful like that.

Actually, what about Chrome running as separate processes? What’s the difference between that and different applications? All that means is that instead of running KMail, your notetaking application, Pidgin, IRC client, OpenOffice and feed reader, now you’ll be running 6 or 7 Chrome separated tabs (so they’re just like individual applications) connected to GMail, Google Notepad, GTalk, Google Docs and Google Reader. In fact, you can have *deep breath*

GMail, Google Notepad, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Reader, Google Contacts, Google Desktop, Google Gears, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Sites, Google Books, Google Translate, Google Scholar, Google Medical Records, Google Directory, Google Groups, iGoogle, Google Adsense, Google Streetview, Google Sync, Google Android, Google Youtube, Google Analytics, Google 23andme, Google Lively, Google Dictionary, Google Voice, Google Feedburner, Google Chrome, Google Chrome OS, Google Public DNS, Google Go, Google Shopping, Google Checkout, Google Apps, Google News, Google Video, Google Blogspot, Google Finance, Google Sketchup, Google Orkut, Google Trends, Google Code, Google Picasa … and now Google Wave.

Every single thing to replace every single desktop application you’ll ever need save for some development tools. I swear I could actually live a year with only using Google Products.

So once people try to compete with the huge massive framework Google has created for itself, the only way to create competitive products is to either rebuild your own framework (which is likely to be extremely time consuming and impractical) or …. Use Google Toolkit and Google API and Google Code.

So even though Google doesn’t own the web, Google has taken over the web. It doesn’t matter if it’s open-sourced, if you have to use Google Toolkit to make anything decent, that’s “Google is here to define what can be done” for you. The ultimate czar of the Internet.

Welcome to the future, where nobody knows what “desktop application” means.

Edited Dec 09 to add 8 more Google products to the list.

No related posts.

The other day I was surfing the web and read an article about Google Chrome in some sort of hacking competition – this then prompted me to check out Google’s progress on porting Google Chrome to Linux and Mac. For those that don’t know Google Chrome is Google’s attempt at making a browser. So far it seems like a really good attempt.

It seems as though lately the Linux builds (I ignored the Mac stuff – but I hear it’s getting good too) seem to be getting to a usable state. Definitely not finished, definitely buggy, but usable. So, like any other Gentooer, I began trying to find out how to get it.

Step 1) Any ebuilds out there?

Why bother do hard work myself if somebody’s already put it in portage? With some google-fu it seems as though there are a couple ebuilds. One by the French, and another by the Chinese. The French one (have not tested) is available in the `THE` overlay, available by doing layman -a THE. The chinese one seems to be called “Shellex-overlay”, and can be accessed here. I’m not quite sure what the French one does as the ebuild didn’t really like my amd64 system (note: Google Chrome only supports 32-bit as of writing). However the Chinese one fared better and provided me with a binary. If you are on a 32-bit system (x86) you should try those ebuilds.

If you don’t want to compile from source, check the depencies list just a bit further down, then check out the build bot. Note: the build bot provides binaries for Windows, Linux AND Mac, so if you’re on a Mac, you’re in luck!

For more information, you should visit the Chromium Linux Building page.

Under `Prerequisites`, it lists down the dependencies as packaged by the Ubuntu system. Here is the list of dependencies as what Gentoo calls them:

• Python >= 2.4
• Perl >= 5.x
• gcc >= 4.2
• bison >= 2.3
• flex >= 2.5.34
• gperf >= 3.0.3
• pkgconfig >= 0.20
• nss >= 3.12
• gconf
• glib
• gtk-engines-murrine
• nspr
• corefonts
• freetype
• cairo
• dbus

Their version requirements are listed as needed.

Step 2) What about 64-bit systems?

There are several techniques of getting Chromium on a 64-bit system. However no matter what, I highly recommend that you create a 32-bit chroot. If you want to track each library individually and symlink your system to hell (as I first attempted), be my guest, but you’re wasting your time. So, first create a chroot by following this nifty guide.

Once you’ve got your chroot up, you can either try out the ebuilds I mentioned before, compile it yourself from source (via Google’s instructions) or be lazy and grab the binary from the Chromium build bot. I have tested the latter two techniques (can’t trust the French nor the Chinese!). To compile it yourself from source, follow the Chromium Linux Building page. Note: you will require quite a bit of HD space (the sources tarball itself is 640MB+), I also suggest you bootstrap from the tarball, the subversion checkout seems a lot longer and a waste of time really. Finally, if you’re just interested in getting the binary and running Chrome (not development), I would do use Release mode (see the building page for instructions). Of course, after making sure you have the dependencies I listed above, you should have Chrome compiled!

If you’re lazy and don’t want to compile, there is a build bot.

Step 3) Run Chromium on Linux!

At this stage, you should have the Chrome binary (either by compiling from source or ebuild, or getting the build bot binary). Now you just have to run the program and enjoy. If you’re running using the chroot, you should use the xhost hack. Do xhost local:localhost outside the chroot, then try run the binary again. Obviously you don’t want to waste time setting up X in the chroot.

Finally, here is a screenshot of Chromium running on Fluxbox! (I normally use KDE, but I wanted a more lightweight WM when compiling Chromium) You might also consider doing nice -n 10 when compiling if you want to continue doing your stuff. In fact, I’m running Chrome right now on KDE to write this post. It’s very fast, uses about 1% CPU, separates itself into different processes per tab, and so far seems pretty “stable”. However I have found that opening a file browse dialog (eg: in an upload form) makes Chromium jump up to about 50% CPU, which sucks.

Any thanks, issues or problems feel free to ask.

No related posts.