Posted by John Patrick on Feb 26, 2004 in
Internet Technology,
Personal Computing 
Recently I spoke with Munir Kotadia at ZDNet UK in London about the future of the Internet — a subject I love to talk about. One of Munir’s questions was "How long can Microsoft dominate the browser market?". "Browser market", I said? Sure, if you look just at PC’s you would wonder why anyone would try to compete with a monopoly that has 95 percent of the market. However, if you look at the market for Internet devices with browsers on them — including televisions, PDA’s, phones, automobiles and virtually any kind of device that has a chip on it and a network connection — then you get a much different picture. How many devices will have a chip and a network connection? All of them — billions of them. Basically, everything becomes a computer on the Web and then no one company dominates that market. There is a huge opportunity for innovation and we are the very beginning of the potential. This is why I am optimistic about Opera Software.
The other topic Munir asked about was why Linux is so popular? There is a perception that Linux is about "free", but my belief is that Linux is about "freedom". I got some feedback from a few readers who said I was more than a little off base with my Linux comments. Maybe, but it is what I believe. It is not about free because it is not free, no software is free. There are implicit costs involved in using any software. The issue is about freedom — for people to make the choices they want to make with the software they use and to have the partnerships they want with other vendors.
The complete interview is here.
Posted by John Patrick on Jan 21, 2004 in
Motorcycles,
Personal Computing 
Geocaching in Florida last week was an exciting experience and it was chilling to come home and find the temperature more than 75 degrees colder. There is a lot I want to write about Linux, WiFi, blogging, digital identity and other aspects of Internet technology, but I know there are patrickWeb readers who are fellow motorcyclists and geocachers who may be interested in this update. The sky was blue, the roads were clear, and I could not resist a motorcycle ride. It was one of the shortest on record for me. An even chillier experience is what happened to my hard drive. (read more)
Tags: backup, geocache, motorcycle, wind chill
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 12, 2003 in
Personal Computing 
It was privilege once again to be able to speak to students at the IT Leadership Academy program at Naugatuck Valley Community College. A show of hands indicated that about 20% of the students had some familiarity with Linux. Michael Mino, the program director, had provided a laptop with Red Hat Linux to each of the seven school groups so they could learn more about it. After my talk the students broke into groups and I looked over the shoulder of some of them to see what they were doing. One student was using Red Hat and I asked him how it was going. "I am figuring out how to use it", he said. The point is that he didn’t have a reference manual, had never been to a class, and didn’t need to ask any questions. He was just "figuring it out." (read more)
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 5, 2003 in
Personal Computing Two IBM colleagues, John Boutross and Craig Fellenstein, are helping out as volunteers in a program called the IT Leadership Academy. The program is sponsored by the Governor of Connecticut and is designed to bring 180 public High School students together to work on IT related projects during the school year. The participating high schools include both suburban and urban. The Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, CT is the host for the sessions. I was fortunate to be guest speaker this morning. (read more)
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 4, 2003 in
Personal Computing ActiveWords has teamed up with Lockergnome to offer a free download of the basic version ActiveWords to anyone who wants it. There has been a lot of demand that has resulted in some download problems so it may take some patience, but I can recommend the product to anyone who spends a lot of time at the keyboard and would like to try a good productivity tool. The free download is here.
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 3, 2003 in
Personal Computing 
One of the software tools I use to leverage my time is ActiveWords. The basic idea with ActiveWords is that you type a word and the word launches a program, jumps to a website, sends an email, substitutes text, or any number of things. I have gotten hooked on it. There are an unlimited number of uses. I type "mob" and ActiveWords types "Best way to reach me is on my mobile phone at +1 203-526-3680". When blogging, I have a number of ActiveWords that speed the creation of links. For example, I type "cat" and ActiveWords responds by typing "http://patrickweb.com/weblog/categories" or I type "ht" and it types "http://www.". I also use it to speed up various functions in Outlook. ActiveWords is one of those things that you have to try for awhile to see the power of it. ActiveWords has teamed up with Lockergnome to offer a free download of the basic version ActiveWords to anyone who wants it. There has been a lot of demand that has resulted in some download problems so it may take some patience, but I can recommend the product to anyone who spends a lot of time at the keyboard and would like to try a good productivity tool. The free download is here. Now, if only they had a version for Linux.
Posted by John Patrick on Oct 29, 2003 in
Personal Computing 
The
introduction of the new version of Microsoft
Office has me thinking a lot
about Linux for my desktop. Microsoft has
performed many technical fetes in their software. Many of the features in Windows
XP and Office are impressive and many
are even intuitive and easy to use. However, many features are not intuitive
or easy and worse yet impose decisions upon the user and at times border on harassment.
We all have our favorite examples of Windows/Office frustrations and I won’t
bore you with mine. Microsoft is taking
security issues seriously but I believe that they believe that the answer to
achieving better security is to make the world "windows
everywhere".
I feel the noose tightening. One path to freedom is Linux.
More and more servers at the world’s e-businesses are running Linux and the
open source community continues to make major progress on scaleability, reliability,
and manageability. The desktop is another story. Microsoft dominates the desktop
more strongly than any product in any market that I am aware of. I decided to
begin the journey toward Linux for my desktop, to learn more about Linux,
and see how far I can get. I’ll be writing about my experiences here on patrickWeb.
At IBM, there are thousands of desktop Linux
users, but I would have to say that they are not average users by any means.
I have confidence in the future of desktop Linux, but I do have some questinos
and I intend to explore them — and also learn from the experience of others.
(read
more).
Posted by John Patrick on Sep 28, 2003 in
Internet Technology,
People,
Personal Computing 
There
was an excellent piece in the New
York Times Magazine today called "The
Sharer" written by David Diamond. He had a Q&A interchange with
Linus Torvalds, the father
of Linux. The final question he asked was
about Linux being the nemesis of Microsoft. The answer from Linus will be a
classic. "I just can’t see myself in the position of the nemesis, since
I just don’t care enough. To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy
something, don’t you? Really, I’m not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just
be a completely unintentional side effect". See the full
Q&A at The New York Times.
(read
more)
Posted by John Patrick on Aug 1, 2003 in
Gadgets,
Personal Computing 
There
is no end to the creativity of the technology industry. The USB
(universal serial bus) had the primary goal of creating a more compact, instant,
hassle-free way to connect a keyboard, mouse, printer, digital joystick, scanner,
set of digital speakers, digital camera, or PC telephone to a PC. Prior to the
sleek and simple USB cables we had big and bulky serial and parallel cables.
If you had more than one serial device, then you needed a special box with multiple
cable connections and you ended up with a mess of cables. Adding a non-USB peripheral
device to a PC can be a non-trivial task that requires a lot of technical savvy
and a certain amount of luck. First you have to figure out which port to use
and then, in most cases, you have to pry open your PC to install an add-in card,
set special switches, and figure out various "settings". USB makes
adding peripheral devices really easy. First, USB replaces all the different
kinds of serial and parallel port connectors with one standardized plug and
port combination. With USB-compliant PCs and peripherals, you just plug them
in and turn them on. What’s next? (read
more)
Posted by John Patrick on Feb 16, 2003 in
Personal Computing The Hartford Courant ran a story this morning called, The Home Office, by Rebecca Reisner. I was pleased to be able to spend an hour on the phone with her to offer my thoughts. Since I have been spending most of my waking hours in my home office for some years I have a lot of thoughts about the matter. She reflected a couple of my thoughts along with those of others in her short story. She did a nice job. There are some more details about the technical parts of the office in patrickWeb, but it needs some updating — a project I plan to do soon. (read more)
