Greplin: a brilliant, innovative, creepy idea

I had a look at Greplin, a search engine for your life.  As its name will tell the Linux users out there, it promises to be an extremely powerful search tool.  Unfortunately, its allusion to gremlins is also close to the mark.  It is currently in closed-source beta, and both conveniently and disturbingly will quickly index any of the services on its list.  This means that within minutes you can give Greplin complete access to all of your key data on Gmail, Gcal, GDocs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I believe cloud computing is very convenient, but I know nothing about the makers of Greplin, or more importantly, where this company will go.

The creator of Greplin, a 19-year-old who grew up in the US, is a graduate of Y Combinator, where he was initially working on an application to turn just about any search into a link to an Amazon product.

If Greplin were a free, open source software that you could run on your own computer in complete privacy and use to index your cloud-based services, I would applaud it as a wonderful innovation.  But as it is, all I'm really doing is allowing a dubious stranger to grep my life.

Thanks, but no thanks.  I can live with the supposed inconvenience of having to check my appointments in my calendar. 

First problem with #ubuntu daily build resolved

Tried to use the wifi at an internet cafe, but couldn't connect.  My android HTC Desire HD could connect, and, of course, I had my USB to micro-USB cable handy, so am now working via a tethered connection.

When Ubuntu 11.04 comes out I will switch over to it and use Unity.

I can't speak for anyone else, but Unity promises to suit my workflow really well.  It's clean, neat, and fast.

-- Alex

Don't talk about open source or freedom until you know what that means to your audience

From the perspective of non-technical end users, it is not important that software is open source or free, unless the openness of the source code or the freedom of the software resonates with their ideals, or unless this translates into a better user experience.

How do we in the world of Free Open Source software (FOSS) convey to non-technical users that our software is better?  How does FOSS translate into a better user experience?

I don't believe that there is a uniform message that will speak to every end user, but I do believe that freedom or openness of source can resonate in some way with everyone.  In a lecture that Richard Stallman delivered in French at a university in France, he said something like this:

Free software can be understand through three ideals: liberty, fraternity, equality.

This evoked great applause, and we who advocate FOSS should carefully consider our audience before we talk excitedly about the thing we know and love.

Running Ubuntu 11.04 with Android USB tether at Design Victoria Seminar

I'm seriously impressed with Ubuntu 11.04 -- the Unity interface is easy, attractive, and really really quick.

How to automate the creation of .desktop files that refer to custom images

One thing to remember about .desktop files in Gnome is that they only work with hard links and system folders.  You cannot refer to an image in your home folder, if you want the same .desktop file to work in someone else's account or on another machine.

If you create a custom icon, the best place is /usr/share/icons.

So let's say you've created your very own Gnome Menu item called  cheetahballs.desktop file and you've put it in:

/media/DATA/Settings/cheetahballs.desktop

And you've got your very own icon:

/usr/share/icons/cheetahballs.png

If you re-install Ubuntu in your root partition and have /media/DATA mounted, then all you need to do is this:

sudo cp /media/DATA/Setting/cheetahballs.desktop /usr/share/applications/cheetahballs.desktop

If you want to have it on your desktop:

cp /media/DATA/Setting/cheetahballs.desktop $HOME/Desktop/cheetahballs.desktop

chmod +x $HOME/Desktop/cheetahballs.desktop

And of course, you could automate this by turning it into a BASH script:

gedit /media/DATA/Documents/bin/restore-desktop-files.sh

#!/bin/bash

#restore-desktop-files.sh

#Restore Gnome Menu item

cp /media/DATA/Setting/cheetahballs.desktop $HOME/Desktop/cheetahballs.desktop

chmod +x $HOME/Desktop/cheetahballs.desktop

#Create desktop shortcut

sudo cp /media/DATA/Setting/cheetahballs.desktop /usr/share/applications/cheetahballs.desktop

exit

In response to the Ubuntu-GNOME dispute http://zd.net/hcZ2yH

The FOSS world should thank its lucky stars for Shuttleworth.  I have watched many hours of his talks and interviews, and read his blog in detail -- something a lot of Ubuntu haters would never do -- and I am fully satisfied that the man has a clear idea of what needs to be done and the drive to make it happen.  I am a fierce advocate of FOSS and volunteer many hours to assist new GNU/Linux users, and also run a MacBook in order to use Screenflow, a wonderful, video editor that I use mostly to produce web videos that promote FOSS.  (Incidentally, I'm giving a lecture on 19th March 2011 at the Linux Users Victoria meeting in Melbourne, Australia),

I applaud Mark Shuttleworth's courage in speaking forthrightly about these topics, and I totally agree with the direction that Unity is heading in.  As experienced users, set in our ways, we might not like it ourselves, but Unity has been designed IN CONSULTATION WITH NOVICE USERS, not by dreamy developers.  When Ubuntu 11.04 comes out I will use Unity until it either works for me or I conclude that it's unusable -- that's my contribution to the real advance of FOSS beyond 1% of the desktop market.