Posts Tagged: Open Source Software
The Apple-ication Tax
Posted by on Sunday, August 23, 2009 in - 8 comments
Imagine for a moment that you are a brilliant person. Are you with me so far? Ok, now imagine that you’ve created a software application that everyone wants. Maybe it’s Lotus 123, or Mathematica, Doom, or a screensaver with flying toasters. • Imagine then, that as you went to sell your …
Firefox at the State Department
Posted by on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 in - 1 comment
In what sounds like the worst meeting ever, the US State Department’s Town Hall Meeting to Announce the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) (that’s really what it’s called), a State Department staff member asked this question: • “Can you please let the staff use an alternative … read more »
The Creepy Canyon
Posted by on Friday, July 10, 2009 in - 1 comment
John Gruber suggests that the common Linux desktop interfaces of Gnome and KDE fall into the uncanny valley - similar enough to Windows for you to expect similar behaviour, but different enough to be problematic: • “By establishing a conceptual framework that mimicks Windows, they can never …
Technology Freedom in Metaphor
Posted by on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 in - 18 comments
Twitter • If Twitter were a phone company, you could only call people who used the same phone company as you. • iPhone • If the iPhone were a desktop computer, you could only install applications approved by Microsoft (or Apple). • DVD • If DVDs were books, you couldn’t read a book from …
Firefox 3.5
Posted by on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 in - 2 comments
As with every major release of Firefox since 1.0, I’ve had the privilege of working with Mozilla on their website updates for the new Firefox 3.5 release. • If you care about web browsers, you already know why it’s awesome, and if you don't care about web browsers, all you need to know is that …
A clever fundraiser from the open source media player, Miro: you can adopt a line of code and watch it mature.
Posted by on Saturday, May 2, 2009 in - 1 comment
OpenStomp - The Open-Source Guitar Effects Pedal. Finally, my inner-geek and inner-rock-star can enjoy something together. How long until I can play Quake on a Stratocaster?
Posted by on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 in - 1 comment
The Long Road to Firefox 3
Posted by on Friday, July 4, 2008 in - 7 comments
With the release of Firefox 3 last month, the Mozilla project, corporation, community, and the open-source software world in general have a great achievement on their collective hands. • My involvement with Mozilla began with a weblog post in October of 2003, over a year before the initial …
Here’s a code-swarm visualization of the Swat open-source project I work on.
Posted by on Tuesday, July 1, 2008 in
If you're running Firefox 3, enter about:robots into the location bar and enjoy. Nerd.
Posted by on Friday, June 20, 2008 in