G for Google… and Goliath.

The grasp of Google on the Web.

Google Latitude is yet another service Google is offering especially aimed for mobile users. You get to update your position live on a map for your friends to see. As a gadget freak I say sweet, yet another cool thing that just shows the power of cellular devices, but on another side, it just adds to the wealth of info Google gets to amass with its apps.

Google is still in a gray area, where we are not yet sure if we can see them as the true good, open source friendly, revolutionizing software company that it claims to be, or if it has crossed the line to the Mega-corp side with Microsoft and Apple, the formerly dreaded AOL or some other sort of evil corporation. Now, Google is not in a state of monopoly. Most of its products have competition on the net, whether it is its map services, text editing, image storing, widget, search, OS (either mobile or its future desktop version), so one can easily avoid its grasp if so needed. Yet, here we have a company that not only does all of that at once, but if not better or smarter, at least together. Why join 15 different services when there is one service that does it all and can interweave all the information at the same time.

And it is not stopping there. With Google Waves on the way, things are getting even more centralized. Although they do still try to keep it friendly by being open source and can be run from any server, 100% Google free (with the exception of its original coding). So again we are facing yet another consolidation of Google’s web of dependencies over the web, and in today’s society we can see how they are become even more central to computing than what Microsoft was in the 90’s. And so we end up with an age old dilemma: the eggs and the basket.

Is it a good idea to centralize everything and be more productive, or is it risking to much gathering all the information under one umbrella when identity fraud, governmental oversight, corporate control and all of that seems to only become more and more imposing? We have already seen Google bow for Chinese policies in order to not loose a market of a billion potential costumers, let’s just hope that that will remain the exception and not the rule.

I for one am too addicted to Google to move out just yet, but it is still important just to keep an open eye and see what is happening, because one never knows when a giant my fall, and they usually fall the hardest.

Democracy in the making..?

“The promotion of democracy is a cornerstone of EU foreign and security policy.” 

 Yep, in June EU citizens will have to fulfil their duty and vote for the new EU parliament. As any good citizen should know, it is not a privilege, but a duty to vote. Apparently EU citizens aren’t good citizens since fewer than 50% of the European population eligible to vote actually does.

Well fortunately Brussels hasn’t forgotten that and is therefore investing in a big campaign to get people to vote. And of course they decided to focus on a particularly important group, the European youth (aka young adults or 18-25 groups). And who is the best in reaching those groups? Well none other than Music Television, or MTV. The office of this MTV\EU partnership is none other than “Can EU Here Me?” And it is a nice initiative, using popular artist to spread the word and get the interest of our future generations. Of course this website is not political in any way.

Since the elections differ from one country to the other (the parliament has 700 seats spread over its 23 members), its sole purpose is to make the youth to want to vote. But to be able to vote you need to know what you are voting for. And that is where the famous artists get in the picture. You have some big European names on this website like Depeche Mode and Tiziano Ferro, and some other… not so European names, Lenny Cravitz to be more precise.

It is nice to see that the EU managed to device such a great strategy with an organisation that has a great pool of resources to use. MTV has all the contacts, it reaches millions of viewers through its channels, and it helps with the concerts that are being sponsored all over Europe. But when the EU is actually trying to strengthen the European identity, why then the focus on non-European artists? Well, it is still a nice step.

But is it useful? the British media has been quick to put a question mark on the project, then again, they have always been sceptical to the EU and its parliament.Others, like in France, see it as a way to boost their own national parties on another level. Since the right is more or less controlling the whole country, people see this election as a way to show their dissatisfaction with the government.

But even if there is more to it behind the elections in France, signs still show a strong disinterest in the election itself. People quickly forget how powerful the EU is actually getting. It is a great asset to harmonise and strengthen the relationship between the European countries, and make Europe a super power by itself in the world. Tonight an important amendment is to be reconsidered by the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), Amendment 138, is in the European constitution to guaranty net neutrality, that is free and open use of the net without minimal restrictions.

The international tech news media hasn’t really liked that idea, and several interest organisations against the ratification have already risen up like Black Out Europe , the Swedish Telekompaketet and the French La Quadrature. The amendment itself is to be ratified tonight at 21h00 CET, when the committee meets in Strasbourg. So by the time you are reading those words, it is probably allready to late. But this is only an example of people trying to actively participate in the European process only when things actualy get crucial. The same thing happened in Sweden during The Pirate Bay trial, where the Pirate Party became suddenly quite important in Sweden and even has representatives for the European elections this June.

The European youth has a lot of vested interest in participating in European politics. But apparently what attarcts the young voters is, not so surprisingly, when fighting “The Man” og institution. So is the idea of actually using one of the biggest media institutions in this day and age an atractive offer to get the young voters interested in European politics? Looking at how many active cases there are around the world, it is only a question of a few years if not months before we can actually feel a change in our post-modern technological society.

Open Source Windows

Usually when people mention open source, people think of Linux, Geeks and Creative Commons and gnus (yeah like the animal). Of course open source has always been the key word in Linux development, but it has also become an important factor in software development on commercial platforms as well like Windows and Mac.

One of the best examples we have nowadays is Firefox. The worlds most popular alternative to Internet Explorer is 100% open source and community driven. Who would believe that a non profit organisation that uses thousands of people from all over the world to create software, and a crucial one at that since everybody is online in our society, and actually manage to become of the most recognisable brands in the software industry.

But Firefox is only one example, if you want you can easily do most of your basic stuff on the computer with free software, most of them being open source.

A great website to start your software browsing is Open Source Windows. This website has a very clear and easy to understand list for all your basic computer needs.

I recently got a new computer, and deciding to keep Vista because of my gaming needs, I decided to try to use as many free open source programs on it, and see if it is a liveable option. And is it? Well I believe it is. And all that thanks to the amazing dedication thousands of hobby programmers from all over the world, kudos to you guys and girls!

So here is a brief list (just to partially recap what OpenSourceWindows says) that should get you started with all your basic needs for your daily computer use.

7zip: Usually, when you download something on the internet, if it isn’t an exe file, it is an archive of the type .zip, . rar, .7zip and countless other compression systems. 7zip happens to be one of the best of them and is open source as well as capable of handling most compression systems out there. So there is only need to have this one installed for all your space saving needs.

Firefox: The flagship product of the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla is an overarching organisation to help the development of open source software, like Firefox.

Thunderbird: Also part of the Mozilla Foundation, this great program has all you need in an email software (well except for Exange) and is a great replacement for OutlookWindows Mail.

Songbird: Aka the iTune killer, also a Mozilla project. This powerful (but still under development) product is trying to give an open source alternative to the most important media player out there. In other words even iPod users can free themselves from the shackles of Apple.

VLC: for all your video watching needs, all rapped in a tight and neat package. A great alternative to the standard Windows Media Player and it has codecs for practically everything.

OpenOffice.org: This is probably the biggest competition Microsoft Office with all the tools you need: either it is the equivalent for Word, Exel, Powerpoint and more. It is just as efficient as Word (although some options may not be exactly the sames) and it is free!

Pidgin: You may have two reasons to want to use that. The first being that you have friends that are spread of several social networks, each with their own instant messengers, forcing you to install five different software just to keep in touch with your neighbourhood friends. Or maybe the instant messenger you use isn’t that great. Well, Pidgin tries to be a universal chat client so that you only need one messenger open at all times, and does a pretty good job at that (I use it both at work and home)

µTorrent: More and more people are using P2P technology to spread their software, mostly because it is not as resource intensive as to host everything on your own server. And the most popular technology to do that nowadays is Torrents. For that you need an efficient and practical torrent client, and µTorrent is at the same time, free, light, easy and very efficient.

Gimp: Adobe Photoshop is probably the most extensive picture editing software on the market, but it is expensive (as in just under $700). Gimp is a free open source alternative, maybe not as powerful as Photoshop, but it does suffice for most of your basic photo editing needs.

Burnaware: A good and simple free CD\DVD and even Blu-Ray burning software with all your basic needs and no publicity or ad-wares. A very powerfull product.

Avast! Antivirus: not open source, but one of the most popular and best free antivirus for personal use, this great program isn’t resource intensive at all (unlike som of its more famous commercial peers) and is easy to use. Great to shield of the computer from all those pesky viruses out there.

By now you should have a fully working computer for all of your basic needs. All legal and all free.

Want more? Well there are a couple of other sites that are interesting:

First there is download.com which is a huge repository of all sorts of softwares, free, shareware and payware, the problem being that there are so many programs that it is not always that easy to find the best one.

Then we have sourceforge.net which is completely dedicated to open source. So if it’s on that site you know it is free and open source. But a lot of the programs there are ongoing projects and so just because it sounds good, it doesn’t mean that it works well…

So there you go, hopefully a first step in a new and liberating open source life

Sour Apple

The new Apple Shuffle

Let us start with a bang: I am no fan of Apple. I actually try to do everything I can to avoid their products. As far as I am concerned, the only thing from Apple i have installed on my PC is the Quicktime codec that VLC has. And that is enough for me.

Why?  If you think Micro$oft is an evil corporation trying to control your life, Apple actually does control your life. Everything you use with them is locked to Apple products. The Macs, their softwares, iTunes, the iPods and iPhones. It is like an evil circle where you have to buy everything expensive so they are all compatible…

What has really irritates me, and the reason why I felt like starting with bashing the Apple, is not Apple itself, but Wired… I’ve been reading this magazine, both online and in print since I was a teenager. That and William Gibson during my high school years are probably what got me so “addicted” to technology.

Now, we all now that most tech journalists are Apple fans, it has something to do with creativity and whatnots. This week end rumours started spreading that Apple had added harware DRM in their new shuffle.  (Just to be more biased I decided to quote the competition).

It proved that this was partially “wrong”. As Wired so well described it in their wonderful article, The chip itself is no big deal, you can use any ear buds, but unless they are Apple approved (with the payment of small licensing fee and a small chip in the headset itself) then you can’t skip tracks or control the volume. Basically you plug in the headset in the shuffle, the music starts, and it stops when you plug it out.

When you look at the competition, like the Creative Zen Stone Plus, you have to wonder, what is Apple exactly trying to do? Make their gadgets look cooler and be less efficient? Like the big lacks on the iPhone compared to other smartphones (this time an Apple criticizing article from Wired, they’re not that bad).

But compatibility and accessibility are only a couple of issues here, another more important aspect here is that of TrustedComputing (fun short explaining the issue). The fact of controlling what a consumer gets to use and not use on hardware is the basis of trusted computing. Sceptics say that it is a new costumerprovider relationship where the provider just doesn’t trust the consumer and therefore decides to implant a chip in the hardware to control what hardware gets to be used on it. I have a slot for such a chip in my PC, fortunately it is chip-less for the moment.

But is Apple, by promoting such a marketing scheme, paving the way to trusted computing? And is that what we really want from what is supposed to be the coolest and most innovating hardware producer in the world? It feels like Apple is going the wrong way here, to a much darker and scarier place, even if they are all white and shinny.

Welcome to the Digital Redundancy

This space is all about my view on the world through technology. Why is it shaping our lives as much as it does, and how do we live with it?

Since high school I have been very influenced by the Cyberpunk movement, ever since I saw Blade Runner actually, and then delved in to William Gibson and all the other 80’s legends. That was barely 10 years ago, we where dreaming of living in a world where everything was portable and connected. And we just had to wait for the begining of the 21st century, not even half a century after the term Cyberspace was coined by a sci-fi writer on his 1927 Hermes typewriter, to take the plunge into this transhuman and postmodern society.

Well, life hasen’t changed that much, except that everyone now, before leaving their house, always make sure that they have their keys, wallet and cellphone. We are always connected to the rest of the world, one way or the other.

But it is not always that society has managed to adapt as quickly as its subjects. And that is what we have to see yet, when the transition from the analogue to the digital is complete, how are we going to come out of it?

“Digital Redundancy in an Analog Plutocracy“