Ubiquity Experiment was Ended For Now
Ubiquity was an experiment Firefox add-on released by Mozilla back in 2008. It basically added a command line interface to the browser to search almost everything on the web using Google search engine. According to the Ubiquity homepage, the first phase of the experiment was successfully ended in 2009. Some of its feature has been integrated to Jetpack, another experiment add-on developed by Mozilla to allow web developers to develop Firefox add-ons more easily. Mozilla stated on the Ubiquity homepage that it will launch second phase of the experiment in “indefinite future”.
I used Ubiquity long time ago. In my experience, it is very easy to use, best for people who love using the command line. However, I always forgot to use Ubiquity by pressing Ctrl+Space when I was doing my research rather than use the search bar. Maybe sometimes in the future Mozilla should add the option to add Ubiquity onto the Firefox toolbar in their Phase II experimentation.
The FSF Open Letter to Google
The following is the email I received from FSF about Google’s recently purchased On2 video codec maker. I already talked about Google’s usage of On2′s VP8 codec might come true in the post “The future version of Youtube might not support Firefox” almost one month ago. I strongly support this statement to encourage Google to license its newly acquired video codec as a royalty-free license. If Google freed the VP8 video codec and switched its proprietary Flash-based Youtube site to its new VP8-based site using royalty-free license, more people will aware the importance of open video format as well as open source movement.
Dear supporter,
This week, Google’s attempt to purchase video codec maker On2 was
approved by On2′s shareholders. If Google does the right thing, this
could be wonderful news for free formats.The FSF has just posted an open letter to Google, calling on it to
free On2′s VP8 codec with an irrevocable royalty-free license, and to
promote the newly freed video codec through YouTube.Read why it would be so amazing for free software developers, free
software users, and all users of the web if Google does the right
thing:http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/google-free-on2-vp8-for-youtube/
We feel that this is a very important message for web developers,
video creators, and tech-savvy members of the public to hear. Please
help us spread it around, particularly here:http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/b462q/open_letter_to_google_free_vp8_and_use_it_on/#
And if you have an account on digg:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Open_letter_to_Google_free_On2_VP8_and_use_it_on_YouTube
(It’s important that we let people everywhere know about the
importance of free software and free formats, so please help spread
the word — but please don’t let sharing important news about free
software lead to further use of services that promote and use proprietary
software.)Thanks!
Sincerely,
Holmes Wilson
Free Software Foundation
GNU/Linux is Slow to Compete Against Mac Mobile (Updated)
Apple announced the release of iPad during the event last Wednesday. That puts the GNU/Linux platform behind the mobile computing. Come to think of it, GNU/Linux haven’t even had any open source device that is equivalent to the iPod Touch. The Google Android OS is only available on some of the smart phones. For some people, like me, only need a device with Google Android OS on it but without paying monthly fee.
Fortunately, I found an open source device called Zii Egg that supports Android OS. When I first read about its hardware specs, I was surprised – it has more features than iPod Touch. The hardware components that are only available on Zii Egg include a SDHC card slot on the side of the device, a HD camera on the rear and a VGA camera in front of the device for better social interaction, a GPS receiver, and a microphone.
As you can see on the Zii Egg website, the device is currently on the development stage. I will definitely purchase this open source device once it’s on the market. Until then, I will stick with my jailbreaked iPod Touch.
UPDATE: I have found a list of the upcoming Android devices that are without phone compatibility: Technical specifications about upcoming Android Devices (This post was just out today, 02/02/2010)
Google Toolbar has slowed my Firefox Performance
I installed Google Toolbar Firefox extension today to see how does the new Google Toolbar affect the performance of Firefox. I tried the earlier version of Google Toolbar before to use Page Rank and it slowed my Firefox performance. Since then, I have waited Google to release its new version of Toolbar hope it would solve the problem. Sadly, Google Toolbar still causes the performance of my Firefox to go down. I have no choice other than to uninstall the extension once again. Hopefully Google will solve this performance lag in the next release of Google Toolbar for Firefox.
Microsoft Gazelle – a new browser OS based on Internet Explorer
Microsoft announced Gazelle secure web browser Operating System concept back in 2009. When I first came across an article that talks about it on buntfu.com, I realized that Microsoft might borrow some code from Internet Explorer to build the OS. Whether MS does borrow the code or not, Internet hackers as well as online criminals will find a way to discover many security flaws just as IE since it’s a Microsoft product. As Ronnie Whisler stated in the article, “Internet Explorer is a virus, adware, spyware, and malware delivery device [as well as Windows]“. Now Microsoft is planning to kill Google Chrome OS through this new OS just as Internet Explorer did to Netscape in the past. We will see how this new OS concept is going as IE’s reputation continues to decrease.
All of the Web Browsers have Security Vulnerabilities
While many countries around the world urge their citizens to stay away from Internet Explorer because of recent GMail attack, Alastair MacGibbon stated that there is no totally secured web browser. The important consideration is “how quickly the browser provider will react to the flaw, manage it and how they will prevent it from happening in the future”. This reminds me of Firefox. Thanks to its bug submission process, the patch will be available in one to two days whereas IE users have to wait one month to get the patch. For more details about this quote, please visit http://www.smh.com.au/technology/enterprise/firefox-opera-downloads-surge-after-ie-security-scare-20100121-mnez.html.
Most of the Linux Code Comes From Companies
Most of GNU/Linux users are contributing to the Linux community either through Corporate Contribution or through Community Contribution. Recently, I found an interesting post at theregister.co.uk states that most of the Linux code(75%) comes from Corporation Contribution (which is paid to write the code), another 18% comes from community contribution (which is volunteered), and another 7% of the code is unclassified (which might also be volunteered).
The following are top companies that contributed to the 75% of Linux code:
Google and Apple, which both use Linux-based system, are absent from the GNU/Linux Contribution list. Perhaps those two companies have very little contribution to the Linux code? I know that Google has several Open Source projects and it’s building its own Linux distro, Chrome OS. Personally I don’t like Apple because its expensive hardware and almost all of the digital contents that come from Apple are DRM-restricted.
NOTE: This post is the correction of the earlier post. Some of the comments below might not reflect content of this post.
Use Google Reader to Monitor Web Pages Without RSS
Google Reader recently receives an update. It now has the ability to automatically look for RSS feed once a web address is entered into the Add Subscription box. If it can not find any feed, Google Reader would monitor the web page. According to this Google OS post, the ability to monitor the web page changes is based on the popularity of the web page. However, it cannot monitor the web page that requires user login and the web page that contains frame, and it can only monitor web pages that written in English.
I will stick to Google Reader’s RSS feature. As for some sites without RSS feed, I have been using Update Scanner Firefox Extension before I switched to Google Reader. It can monitor almost anything, including web pages that contain frame and support multiple languages on the web pages. It can also can monitor the pages that require user log in as long as the user is logged in and has the correct cookie information.
IE doesn’t Follow Web Standards and Make Web Developers and Customers Suffer (Updated)
Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) discovered a big security flaw by the Chinese a few weeks ago. They used this security flaw to hack to the Google’s main server. Meanwhile, Researchers has discovered more security flaws in IE that could let an attacker to take control of targeted computer, according to an article from Mashable “More Security Flaws Found in Internet Explorer“.
UPDATE: Similar article found on daniweb.com. It also mentioned about Firefox and Chrome. I like the first sentence of this article, “Another day, another IE flaw!” It means that the Internet Explorer patches that Microsoft offered are useless.
I read lots of complains about IE not follow web standard, thus web developers are frustrated about cross-browser compatibility for their websites. As a web developer and a GNU/Linux user, I test my website in Windows XP through VirtualBox from time to time. However, I do not test the cross-browser compatibility in IE. I test the functionality of my warning box in IE. If Internet Explorer is presented, the site stops loading and displays an error message in the warning box to encourage users to switch to other browsers in order to block the IE users.
The future version of Youtube might not support Firefox
Recently, YouTube has opened its TestTube HTML 5 service to allow users to experiment with HTML 5 version of YouTube. Unfortunately, TestTube only uses H.264 codec to display the video which Firefox doesn’t support. H.264 is a non-free, licensed codec. In order to use the codec, video content publishers needs to pay $5 million license fee every year. Mozilla supports free and open solution. Its Ogg Theora codec is similar to H.264 codec. Not only its video quality is the same as H.264 (sometimes maybe better), but also it can easily convert to a large variety of video formats. According to “Will Idealism be Firefox’s Downfall?“, Google might use On2 codec on the future version of YouTube, which is better than H.264. If not, YouTube users will be switching to other web browsers that supports H.264 and Firefox will be history.