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Macedonia picks Ubuntu for 20,000 PCs

November 17th, 2007 by iDunzo

A batch of 7,000 PCs with Ubuntu Linux have been sent to Macedonian schools, the first of a collection that Ubuntu sponsor Canonical expects will reach 20,000.

Through a program called Computer for Every Child, the Macedonia Ministry of Education and Science plans to install the PCs throughout its elementary and secondary school system.

Ubuntu will run on the 20,000 PCs, but 160,000 more students will be able to share those machines using hardware from NComputing, Canonical plans to announce Tuesday. The PCs are being supplied and installed by Haier, a Chinese PC maker.

The Computer for Every Child initiative is the largest and most important education project undertaken in the 15-year history of the Republic of Macedonia.

By selecting Ubuntu as the operating system for all of our classroom virtual PCs, our education system can provide computer-based education for all schoolchildren within the limited financial and infrastructural confines that most institutions face today.

– Ivo Ivanovski, Macedonia’s minister for the information society

The schools are using version 7.04 of Edubuntu, a version of Ubuntu tailored for classroom use.

With PCs already commonplace in richer countries, companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and Canonical are focusing on reaching markets in developing countries.

Posted in Open Source + Software + Technology | Comments Off on Macedonia picks Ubuntu for 20,000 PCs

USA Today Cuts 45 Jobs, Unwired Employees to go First

November 16th, 2007 by iDunzo

Newsroom layoffs have become increasingly common as the newspaper industry learns to cope with its online adolescence. What’s sobering is that even USA Today, currently the most read paper in the U.S., is going through the same process despite its continued success.

Gannett’s stalwart publication has announced that it will be cutting 45 newsroom positions, amounting to roughly nine percent of its editorial staff.

After holding a staff meeting to break the news, editor Ken Paulson sent out the following memo:

It’s unfortunate that we have to take these steps, particularly when our newspaper circulation is growing and USATODAY.com has been named the top news website in the country by the Online News Association. Unfortunately, revenue has not kept pace and we’re now facing the same cutbacks that so many other news organizations have already experienced.

Here’s where it gets interesting, though. Later on in the memo Paulson reveals that there’s a specific criteria in place the types of employees they’d like to cut:

The job eliminations will be done on a voluntary basis in the form of buyouts for staffers with 15 years or more of Gannett experience and less than five years of online experience. Departments will exclude certain key positions based on strategic needs in 2008. We hope to achieve all job reductions through voluntary buyouts, but job eliminations are possible if we don’t have enough applicants.

Vaguely mentioning “online experience” as a factor just seems odd. It will be interesting to see how this story flushes out over the coming days.

Source: Poynter Online

Posted in News + Technology | Comments Off on USA Today Cuts 45 Jobs, Unwired Employees to go First

Planets Collide! Not Just In The Movies Anymore

November 15th, 2007 by iDunzo

The early days of planetary solar systems can be violent times indeed. Our own moon was most likely birthed from a stupendous collision, before our own solar system had settled down into the relatively placid routine we see today.

Astronomers have been observing a star system called HD 23514 in the Pleiades cluster that seems to be going through the same bumper-cars evolution as our own, with rocky planets potentially similar to Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars in the process of formation.

Using an infrared camera with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, a UCLA-led team has found hot dust surrounding a star much like our own Sun, but about 45 times younger.

The warm dust appears to indicate what they call “catastrophic collisions” in a region roughly comparable to the space between the orbits of Mercury and Mars in our own solar system.

They believe that so-called planetary embryos – rocky bodies that are evolving into full-fledged planets – must have recently bumped, breaking up or even pulverizing one another. Says Inseok Song of the Spitzer Science Center:

“In the process of creating rocky, terrestrial planets, some objects collide and grow into planets, while others shatter into dust; we are seeing that dust,” Song said.

Researchers said this was the first evidence of planet formation in the Pleiades, and further supports the notion that terrestrial planets like those in our own solar system are relatively common.

Source: Gemini Observatory

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EU Rolls Out the Hate on Google, DoubleClick

November 14th, 2007 by iDunzo

Leave it to the European Commission to ruin a good party.

On Tuesday, the antitrust arm of the European Commission nixed approval on Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, citing competitive concerns.

The EU also ordered an in-depth review into the acquisition.

The scale of the deal certainly raises eyebrows — $3.1 billion isn’t chopped liver — but by most estimates, Google grossly overpaid for the company.

DoubleClick’s annual revenue — which reportedly falls short of $200 million — hardly puts a dent in the overall Web ad market, which is estimated to be worth anywhere from $17 billion to $20 billion.

The bigger question is this: Why didn’t the European Commission pick on Yahoo for its $680 million purchase of RightMedia in July 2007?

And what about Microsoft’s $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive in August of this year?

Posted in Google + News + Technology + Web | 1 Comment »

Will Google Android Be Windows To Apple’s iPhone?

November 14th, 2007 by iDunzo

Everyone is complaining that Google’s Android looks an a lot like the iPhone.

Well, what if that is Google’s point? What if Google hopes to do to the iPhone what Microsoft did to Apple’s first user experience breakthrough, the Mac?

Here is the Google video again, just to remind you what Android looks like:

Let’s return to the to the Android, Windows analogy.

Think about it: Apple spent a lot of time building the Mac. They proved the concept of the GUI on the desktop, but Apple never captured the desktop.

Why? Because all Microsoft had to do was step in with a lower-cost alternative that ripped off Apple’s UI and did most, but certainly not all, of the things the Mac did.

Windows has never equaled the Mac in terms of aesthetics or usability, but it never had to. It just had to be good enough.

The other reason Windows beat the Mac in the 1980s was because it was, gasp, more open than the Mac.

While Windows is far from an open platform, it is more open than Mac and Microsoft has always courted developers. As a result, Windows is the global ecosystem of applications and developers.

Google is intentionally making Android more open than its closed rival, the iPhone. Google is courting lots of developers with lots of money. Doesn’t this all seem a little familiar?

Let’s push the analogy further.

What does Google Android promise? It promises easier-to-use mobile applications on a lot of cell phones.

Doesn’t that promise sound a lot like Microsoft’s promise with Windows? Easier-to-use PCs for the mainstream?

I am sure Google doesn’t want to be compared to Microsoft, but at first glance Android sure looks like a movie we’ve seen before.

What do you think? Do you think Google plans to use Android to give the Microsoft Windows treatment to the iPhone?

Posted in Apple + Google + Microsoft + Technology + Wireless | 2 Comments »

Google Android Puts The Screws To Nokia’s S60

November 13th, 2007 by iDunzo

I assume by now everyone has checked out the video demos of Google’s Android platform. If not, you can watch them here.

One thing I noticed about the slick user interface is that it marches right past Nokia’s S60’s usability. What can S60 do to prevent Google from eroding its market share?

In short, probably nothing. Any new mobile platform will steal users from each and every other platform that already exists on the market. But that sure shouldn’t stop Symbian and Nokia from trying.

Even the latest iteration of S60 doesn’t do some of the things we saw in the Android demo.

While Symbian and Nokia are probably hard at work developing touch-capable software and phones, Google has already done it, to a certain extent.

The demos highlight how applications can be used and tied together seamlessly to create a natural workflow.

Don’t get me wrong. S60 is a great platform, one of the best, in fact. Its strengths have led it to become the dominant smartphone platform in the world (78% share). But it is still somewhat clunky to use. It requires users to think like they are interacting with a computer.

If there’s one thing the iPhone seems to have taught the world is that mobile user interfaces don’t have to be painful to deal with.

While everyone else is going to be playing catch up for a while, Google will represent a serious challenge when Android finally becomes available.

Will it have the hardware cache, the integrated platform that Apple has with the iPhone and its other products? Or the global manufacturing and distribution empire that Nokia has?

Likely not but the interface sure does some cool things and as is evidenced by U.S. sales of the Apple iPhone, people are tired of difficult user interfaces.

So Nokia needs to make some snappy changes to S60. Though the Finnish giant is not known for quick updates to its core platform, in this case it has a lot more to lose than anyone else if it can’t play the UI game up to Apple and Google’s standards.

Posted in Google + Software + Technology + Wireless | Comments Off on Google Android Puts The Screws To Nokia’s S60