innovate !!

Who innovate today in desktop experience?

This is a complex question…

Google is the first who come in my mind. A lot of engineer have left Microsoft to Google. Google have make a lot of new things as Google hearth, Google Desktop, Gmail, Google reader, Igoogle, Gcalendar , Google spreadsheet,… But Google video was a badtrip and they have to buy Youtube. Google have nothing really new since few month… Google have done a great job to make a web “Office” but it is just a migration to web not a real new idea.

EDIT: they have just released the google presentation.

MAC OS X have add a lot of new idea in desktop but nothing new since it.Apple have take a strong leadership in mp3 reader and Iphone will be a success. So, Apple is now clearly investing in Iphone, Ipod which bring more money to them.

The big one, Microsoft, fall down. The OpenXML have been refused by International Organization for Standardization.Windows Vista is compare to the Windows Me and Microsoft have provide a downgrade to Win XP.

And Aero is not as good as compiz. Microsoft is good to copy something and make it better for everyone (MACOS->Windows, Lotus 1-2-3-> MS Excel, Java->.NET,…). But Microsoft is in bad way. MS Office and MS Windows are the products which bring cash to Microsoft. MS office is challenged by openOffice, Google spreadsheet,… And MS Windows is left for Linux on server side. and now the last part (but bigger one) desktop environment is more and more challenged by Untubu & Suse who have simplified Linux to make it usable for everyone.

Innovation come from open source today. Power of community get bigger!

The console is left for beautiful GUI on linux. Microsoft have seen the trap and contract with Novell to save him for future but revolution come fast and who know what will be the future market-share of desktop?

Imo, It will take time.I am switching to Linux as many other people. I am an engineer and for moment most of people who switch to Linux are IT engineer but they are prescriptor. When someone want to buy a computer and know nothing about it, he ask for advice to prescriptor. The other sign is that administration switch to Linux. A lot of project improve compatibility (Mono, Moonlight, cygwin…) and other products are on both plate-form (OpenOffice, Firefox,…). So all this things make migration easier but a lot of issue is still there because of the lack of support for Linux.

open ID

I have ever talked about open ID.

To sum up, Open ID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.

For non geek people, You have only one password to remember which will authenticate you everywhere on web.

Else you can see this beautiful video or the one of 2006

This is very powerful to solve the identity theft. The main issue is that it must be used everywhere to be sure that it will become a standard.

You can get an openId here.

Major actors of web do not use it because they wait the new framework OpenId 2.0. The specs of this new framework are near finished and will be released soon.

So, we will see after the specs released what will be done by all main web actors. But we ever seen some sign that show that will be a success.

AOL have ever go ahead and used it today for 63 million users.

I am really proud of Orange (France telecom) who have invest in this new technology. You will have 40 millions of orange consumers who will used it.

Microsoft Monopole

In US you have the antitrust law in France we have the anti packaging law.

This law just said that you can not sell 2 products together without selling each products.

In France, you can only found PC with Windows on it and a lot of constructor do not allow consumer to buy PC without it. So we have a petition to warn our country about this issue who do not let a change to other product of the market. The cost of software installed on your PC is about 20/25% of the total cost. This not only for MS windows, you will have a lot of installed software

So you can sign the petition to stop this bad practice which make price expensive and do not let the choice for your software.

When firefox bring the web2.0 revolution…

Firefox is really a great browser with tabs , plugins, Anti fishing, RSS, … and many more things.

But the last Alpha 8 of Firefox bring a really cool thing: the web based protocol handlers.

This system allow people to register web service to open mime type. So you can open a file without local rich client to open it. The power of web service will do it for you.

Imagine you want to open a document .doc, but you do not want to install MS word, you will use the Google document web service to open it!!

This system is great because no issue about multi-OS support. Most of plate-form have a browser and this is the only thing needed!

PDF file is a pain to open because Acrobat reader is really slow and have to many module to load whereas it is quite never used. I have never understand why acrobat open all module even if not needed and why it will not check file content to see what is needed… I use Foxit reader to open PDF but now I will use WebService to open it.

Your computer will no more need extra application than a browser and access to web;)

A lot of web service is outside to help you to open document. In my opinion, it is the future for a big part of application. But this system is not perfect to do complex things (coding, compile, .. for example) but it is cool to view any format. So, you will no more need viewer because all will be online.

Gnome 2.20 is out!

Gnome have just released the new version 2.20.

You can found here the full release note.

Else here is a quick summary:

Evolution (mail client)

• Auto detect missing attachments
• Mail received notification
• Backup & Restore system
• Magic space bar (by pressing space bar you can see all your mailbox)
• Calendar/Events improvements

Epiphany (browser)

• in-line completion improvements

Multimedia

• Eye of Gnome is faster and more stable
• Eye of Gnome have easier access to basic information and metadata
• Eye of Gnome transfer image to other image application
• Video & Audio codec installation work-flow

Back office

• Support for interactive PDF forms
• Note synchronization
• Syntax highlighting in text editor improve
• File management
• Improve user friendly/accessibility
• Switch between account in password management
• Better support for right to left language

Bizutage

Pour une fois mon post sera en francais sur un sujet qui me tiends à coeur: Le bizutage.

En effet, je vois très souvent à la télé des sujets sur les dérapages des bizutages montrant des images chocs et mélangeant beaucoup de bizutages de différentes ecoles et de différentes années ensemble. Cela fait vendre…

J’ai été aux Arts et Métiers, écoles connue pour son bizutage et franchement la majorité aime bien le bizutage. Cela permet de créer un lien entre la jeune promotion et les autres promotions ( sortie d’école ou non). En France, les réseaux sont très importants et nous sommes le plus grand réseau d’anciens élèves (28000 membres). Et cela est en grande partie dû à notre bizutage.

Les dérapages dans les bizutages il y en a eu et il y en a sans doute encore dans plein d’écoles. Cependant, tout est fait pour les éviter. Pour autant, doit on généraliser et penser que tout est fait de la même facon… bien sur que non.

Il y a de bon et de mauvais bizutages. Certe, notre bizutage est long (2 mois) et demande beaucoup aux élèves de première année ( apprendre des chants traditionnels, faire des projets ensembles, rencontré et discuter avec les 2 et 3eme années, animations,…). Mais, ils ont en permanence le choix de refuser et de dire non. Il y a des règles strictes ( les 2eme années n’ont meme pas le droit de touché les 1 ere année…) que s’impose les 2eme années et de nombreux groupes qui organisent, s’occupent du folclore, surveille et aident les premières années,… Chaque groupe controllant l’action de chacun afin d’éviter tout débordement.

Bref, cela est très structuré et on ne pratique absolument pas d’humiliation. C’est sûr, les bizus subissent des préssions. Mais nous en subissons tous pendant notre carrière professionnel. Et le but de ces pressions n’est absolument pas de les faire craquer. Nous sommes simplement la pour essayé de créer un lien entre les élèves en première année et les autres promotions.

Bref, les reportages sur le bizutage sont systématiquement a charge et cela m’enerve au plus haut point.

Porté une blouse grise, avoir des chants traditionnels et défilé en fil indienne c’est du folklore et cela n’est en aucun cas une humiliation. C’est plutot marant… Surtout qu’en général, c’est plutot festif comme ambiance.

linux marketshare

I have found a beautiful survey which show the market-share of Linux distro and Linux main tool ( windowing environment, browser, email client,…)

All this analyse is done by collecting vote in community so it is not a real market share but it can show you a good view thanks to the number of vote.

So first, we can see that Ubuntu is the first one (no surprises) but we see that SUSE have taken the major step forward (compare with 2006 survey).

The third place is Debian which is imo good for server but really bad for desktop. But it is only my opinion.

For windowing environment, we see that KDE and GNOME take quite all the market share ( no surprise too).

And Gnome take the lead over KDE. It seems OK because Unbuntu (and debian families) is really big and SUZE (out of Europe) is by default on Gnome. You can see all distribution with Gnome as default desktop here.

For browser, it is quite simple

Firefox have take all and let dust to other. Mozilla have really done a great job and have change the flat world of browser with Firefox.

Linux have really done a big step forward big get it more user friendly.

A lot for firm use it as server for long time but now with all good job done by Ubuntu, Suse,… team we have a easy OS that can be used by any person and not just engineer and IT people.

After user friendly effort, we have the virtualisation which provide a real windows emulation (not as wine).

I am more and more thinking to take the time to install a Suse on my pc to replace my old windows because I do not want Vista cause of the 1Go of ram taken by it at start. I have a VM player with a Suse under Windows, I will switch to Suse desktop with Qemu or vmplayer for windows

mono winforms

As many knows, it is the last part of mono which need to be implement to have a full support of the MS framework .NET 2.0.

If you read the class status page of Mono, you will see that we are near 98% of complete.

In fact, all MWF of .NET 1.0 take a big place in it.

What is really missing are:

• HTML element and friends
• WebBrowser and friends
• some little other class but not as useful/hard to make as previous one

And what I read today is that a new component named Mono.Mozilla provide a wrapper arround mozilla unmanaged class.

So now we have the webBrowser in MWF!!!

What a good news!! I guess that we will have in next version of mono the full support of .NET framework 2.0 if all MWF bug are solved…

Everaldo have post a good review to see the state of bug tracking in MWF.

Compiz released!!

Compiz have a lot of activity during summer !!

A new release is just out. The 0.5.4 is very important because it is thefirst release with the merge of fork of compize (Beril, compize.Extra) and compize. Now we have a system more stable, more flexible and with a lot of new plugin. This merge will lead to a real integration in a lot of linux distrib.

The logo have change too!

Small video of a new features:

Google summer of code

Soc for friend is a beautiful project of Google to help open source software by sponsoring student project for open source world.

Mono use SOC for different kind of project. The result is not the same for each project. Sometimes, you have a great student which become oficial commiter and help project for many years and sometimes you have a bad result with no documentation. Mono have been lucky on that.

See a small review of SOC throught many years!

SOC 2005

• #Ruby.NET implementation
• Cecil/Write support
• GCC CIL backend
• MSBuild implementation
• ASP.NET GUI Designer
• Bug finder
• ASP.NET GUI Designer
• Managed C++ front-end
• XAML compiler
• Diva Video Editor
• PHP Compiler for .NET
• XSLT Compiler
• Monodoc improvements
• Windows.Forms 2 controls
• QNX Port
• Ruby.NET

hSOC 2006

• A CIL Linker
• ASP.NET Project Support for MonoDevelop
• Assembly Browser Addin for MonoDevelop
• Bindings for Gstreamer
• Bittorrent Class Library: Client/Core
• BitTorrent Class Libraries, GUI
• BitTorrent Class Libraries: Server/Tracker
• Distributed Transactions
• Elimination of redundant checks in JITted code
• Further implementation of MBuild build tool
• GCC CIL Backend
• MonoDevelop Source Code Control Integration
• PHP.NET Compiler (continuation to last summer’s project)
• Strip Controls
• Visual Basic Compiler
• WebParts Implementation
• X GL compositing for Mono: a compiz CLR binding

SOC 2007

• Windows.Forms.Designer
  
• MonoDevelop Debugger
• FastCGI ASP.NET Server
• WYSIWYG Editor for Monodoc and MonoDevelop
• Freehand Notations for Tomboy / Widget for GTK#
• Gendarme project development
• Unit Testing Code Coverage Prioritization Using CodeRank
• MonoDevelop Database Improvements
• On WCF, NetPeerTcpBinding and PeerResolvers
• Ribbons Widget
• .NET Framework 3.0 WPF controls
• Scientific Image Processing Class Library
• MonoTorrent Gtk# GUI
• ASP.NET AJAX
• Gendarme Tasks
• boost for mono
• Adding C/C++ support in MonoDevelop
• Banshee – Porting Banshee to Windows
• System.Messaging API
• Gendarme: The problem finder

I enjoy to see the bittorrent lib become a such good component that it take new project to have a good GUI under GTK#.

I enjoy too to see winform designer and debugger under monodevelop which will become a real good IDE.