Acts of Volition

We’re all familiar with the MP3 file format. As far as most people are concerned, the format implies free music. The software required to play MP3 files is usually free as well. That said, neither of these things necessarily follow from use of the MP3 format.  •  What most people don’t realize is …

The GNOME User and Developer European Conference (GUADEC) is underway this weekend in Stuttgart, Germany. For those, like myself, who are unable to attend, the fine open-source media company, Fluendo is providing live streams and archived videos of the talks.  •  The talks from GUADEC day one are …

I spent last week in New England visiting some clients, friends, and geeks. The geeks part was at the Linux World Expo and Fedora Users & Developers Conference. I’ve posted some photos from the trip.  •  The Linux World Expo was comprised mostly of creepy salesmen at booths with microphones giving …

For slice of readership to whom this type of thing is relevant, I have compiled an overview of of the inconsistencies in file-save confirmation dialogs in Gnome. There is also a page with screenshots of the dialogs in question. I’ve posted the overview to the Gnome desktop development mailing list …

The Gnome Outliner project was dreamed up and got started here on this weblog last May. Gnome Outliner is a simple application to write and edit outlines for the Gnome desktop environment for Linux.  •  There was some nice buzz when the project got started - lots of people were proposing ideas and …

It started innocently. I started using a free/open-source web browser, then called Phoenix (now Firefox). It seemed to me to be faster, easier, and generally better than Internet Explorer on my Windows XP powered laptop. Soon after, having been unhappy with the performance of Microsoft Outlook … read more »

When I was growing up, my bedroom was always a mess. Every week or two, my parents would get me to clean my room. I wasn’t interested in cleaning my room, but I had to get it to at least pass a quick visual inspection my mom or dad.  •  To make sure I passed the informal inspection with minimal …

This might seem obvious to anyone who uses the Gnome desktop environment for Linux, but since most of you don’t, I thought it worth pointing out. In Gnome, You can put “emblems” on files or folders. The emblems are small icons that help differentiate and identify particular items. They work …

Weblogs are abuzz* today with the the Google Suggest beta featuring javascript-powered auto-complete in the search box.  •  I’d like to float an obvious (I think) suggestion for Firefox. I would like to see the Google search bar that is built-in to Firefox have this Google Suggestion auto-complete …