Microsoft Reaches Out To Linux - Says Happy Birthday!

Microsoft and Linux have been long term adversaries. While the comparison may not be logical - since one is a corporation and another an operating system, it has not stopped people in either camps to lock horns with each other.

However, on the eve of Linux celebrating its 20th birthday, Microsoft is reaching out to Linux via a video that says - "Happy Birthday Linux!".

Watch the video below.

Google Launches Open Source YouTube Channel

Google has launched an open source channel on YouTube. The aim is to collect and organize all the videos related to Google and open source projects in one location.

All you want to know about Google Chrome OS in a Nutshell

Google recently lifted the curtains on its soon to be flagship product Google Chrome OS - a heavily customized Operating system which runs on top of the Linux kernel. Google did this with great panache by releasing the source code of the operating system under an open source license. The open source part of the operating system is known as Google Chromium OS.

Since a lot has already been written about the Google Chrome OS, I thought of doing something different. I collected the details of the project and created a mind map providing a birds eye view of Google Chrome OS.

VideoLAN - VLC 1.0.0 has officially been released

VLC media player - A universal media player which plays video and audio files of any known format has reached the version 1.0 milestone. I especially have a liking for this media player because it is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, BeOS and BSDs. And, in my experience, I never ever had to hunt for media codecs once I installed VLC on my machine. Heck, it even plays Flash (.flv) video files.

What does it mean to be free ? - We're Linux contest winner announced

Linux is Free. Do you know what that means ? If you don't, the following video will teach you the true meaning of Free.

Keynote address by Aaron J Seigo at the KDE 4.0 release event

On January 18th 2008, Aaron J Seigo, President of KDE e.V. and its lead developer gave a keynote address at the KDE 4.0 release event held at Google campus in Mountain View, California. This is a video recording of this august event. In his talk, Aaron gives a birds eye view of the different features in KDE 4.0 as well as a glimpse into the future of KDE 4.

The video is in streaming format and unfortunately Google has not provided a download link with it. So for those who are interested in downloading the video to view it in their free time, can do so using the 'wget' utility as follows :

wget -c --output-document=kde4keynote.mp4 "http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0&secureurl=twAAANo77xYbVm8VXV5rhG_qPPpRNCbSEwfixV2tMd2j4Uo4ntmtDVLDPHv8b_tQPoUJLJU8lvIfj47OgHJ7bJ4RRwep_TFHvSGSreO8JGQSiA1OxXR4qiGM8upVqU__NCUyGZLbQ1xofY2aPsatvJBqPpJjooYujsvezZduVlne8N2e2jgrjNJkf5JlwHBHpMBkCbzReaQPOoPrQMFpRTM9jkLcsAGjye2-MJbx_0ydYM3cfayiofNm3hE1SmvOtnBW8g&sigh=eklYkc_l10OrI60da0Ybj7O8_oY&begin=0&len=466236"

Those who have a broadband internet connection can watch it below.

Also take a look at the talks given by a number of other delegates at the KDE 4.0 release event.

Blue-ray vs HD DVD Format war move closer to an end

Blue-ray and HD DVD are two divergent high-density optical disc formats for the storage of digital information, including high-definition video. For a couple of years now there has been a war of sorts going on between the Blue-Ray and HD DVD camps to gain dominance over how people would view future digital entertainment.

Of late, the HD DVD format has taken a beating with Warner Bros. deciding to release all its movies exclusively in Blue-ray format. Now only Universal, Paramount Pictures and a few minor ones from the movie industry are still in the HD DVD camp with 20th Century Fox,New line, Sony Pictures, Buena Vista and of course Warner Bros firmly entrenched in the Blue-ray camp. This means that over 70% of Hollywood's movie output will be released in Blue-ray discs.

Fig: Industry support for HD DVD and Blue-ray formats

Blue-ray discs sales in the US is ahead enjoying 65% of the market over HD-DVD's 35% which is another factor which pushes Blue-ray closer to becoming the industry standard.

Fig: Blue-ray enjoys a 65% market share at present

HD DVD specifications

• Capacity : 15 GB (Single layer), 30 GB (Dual layer) and 51GB (Triple layer)
• File systems supported : ISO9660, Universal Disc Format (UDF)
• Region encoding : None
• Backward compatible : Yes
• DRM : Optional but can be incorporated.
  

Blue-ray specifications

• Capacity : 25 GB (Single layer), 50 GB (Dual layer)
• Region encoding : Yes (Divided into three regions)
• Backward compatible : Optional. Left to the manufacturers.
• DRM : Support for several layers of DRM
  

As you can see, Blue-ray has a clear advantage as far as the specifications are concerned. As an end note, here is a funny video clip featuring none other than Hitler ranting over the imminent demise of HD-DVD format.

Massive list of free educational video lectures - courtesy Berkeley and MIT

A couple of years back, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) released a press note revealing their intention to make available free of cost the study notes which includes lectures, tutorials, video and audio of lectures of all their courses online. This was big news then and was welcomed by aspiring professionals and institutions the world over. And MIT Opencourseware was the platform chosen to deliver on their promise.

In fact you can find a huge collection of video lectures (which this post is about) on the MIT opencourseware website. The lectures are divided into their respective sections which makes it quite easy to find what you need.

Also check out this web page which features links to over 177 video lectures from the Berkeley University as well as links to other online educational resources. A very good resource worth bookmarking.

Social bookmarking explained in plain English

Social bookmarking has literally changed the way people aggregate and bookmark content. Gone are the days when you relied exclusively on bookmarking interesting sites you visit in your web browser's bookmarks menu. Now a days, the trend is to maintain all your bookmarks at a central location online and then share them with like minded people. Thus you have a process where by you never lose track of the interesting sites at the same time get to explore new sites which cater to your tastes but which has eluded your eyes.

One of the premier social bookmarking sites is del.icio.us which is a Yahoo venture. Here you can create an account and then start bookmarking your sites. What is more you can also tag your sites and enter short descriptions about it thus making it much more easier to manage.

Well if you didn't understand the concept behind del.icio.us by reading my short explanation, then I don't really blame you. A better bet would be to watch this Youtube video.

A word about the creators of this video

This video is shot by two enterprising individuals (couples actually) by name Sachi LeFever and Lee LeFever. They run a company called Common Craft and their job is to create educational (or promotional) videos such as the one shown above explaining various concepts related to technology and as you can see, they have done a pretty good job of it.

What I really find unique about the video is the way it is shot, where they explain things using pictures printed on paper with a little bit of animation thrown in and of course using neutral accent English thus bringing it down to the level of a child's understanding. You can also find many other videos on their site. And if you have some spare change, you might be interested in hiring them to do a similar video of your site too ;-).

How to create a custom DVD from multiple video formats

I have always found it a hassle to convert a video file from one format to another in Linux for lack of (or rather, not being aware of) a good Free video conversion suite. I have tried converting an Avi file to another format such as mp4 using some software but the results were far from satisfactory. I take it that it has more to do with the settings I selected than the fault of the software I used.

Axel has written a quite detailed article explaining how to create a custom DVD using a Free video conversion software called DeVeDe. What is really interesting about his article is that he shows the exact settings he used in the conversion - a big factor if you want your converted video file to have more or less the same quality. In fact my experience shows that you need to get the ratio of number of frames per second with respect to resolution of the video right else the quality of the video might suffer.

Fig: DeVeDe software interface

He has used the Windows version of DeVeDe but this is a software which is available for Linux as well. For example, in Ubuntu, you can install this software using the command :

$ sudo apt-get install devede

You need to have Mplayer, Mencoder, DVDAuthor, VCDImager, MKisofs and all the proprietary codecs installed though since DeVeDe is just a front-end. More over since DeVeDe is a Python script, it requires Python as well. For more details on the actual steps required to convert a video file from one format to another, do read the guide.

A talk by Richard M Stallman - Youtube video

This is a very interesting concise talk (or rather, answers to a set of questions) by Richard.M.Stallman the father of GNU movement. The video was shot by Arturo Di Corinto for Candida TV. This is one of the best video clips of talk by RMS I have come across in recent times.

A new way to look at networking

Van Jacobson is a research fellow at PARC. Prior to that, he was the Chief Scientist and co-founder of Packet Design, Chief Scientist at Cisco and has also headed the Network Research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Van talks at Google Tech Talks about the concept of a network and how it enables the efficient transfer of data from one remote location to another. In the talk Van laments how the network research in the US has stuck in a dead end for the past decade or so and it should be a wonderful time for networking as every thing is connected to everything else, there are cell phones, computers, laptops, PDAs and so on and each can be connected with each other. But unfortunately as Van puts it every thing we do with networking is getting harder. Wireless barely works and information or data is not at sync with all the diverse devices we use. In his talk he puts forward his idea of how networking can be made simpler.

A very informative talk worth watching by anyone who is interested in knowing how computer networks work. Duration: 1 Hr 21 Min

Revolution OS - an award winning documentary which traverses the path of Free Software, Open Source and Linux

This is one of the finest documentaries created which traces the path taken by GNU, Free Software, Open Source and Linux. The whole documentary all of 1 hour and 10 minutes long consists of bits and pieces of conversation with various leaders of the community which of course includes Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Richard M Stallman, Bruce Perens and many others.

In the documentary, Linus Torvalds calls RMS the great philosopher of the movement and himself the engineer.

It clearly brings to fore the idea of GNU and Free Software, GPL and copy left, the history of Linux, the concept of Open Source, and in what way Open Source is different from Free software. The documentary produced by J.T.S Moore also shows snippets of publicity the movement received in the main stream media such as in CNBC and The New York Times. The documentary even feature a couple of appearances of some prominent people from Slashdot.

And at the end of it all, you get to hear an excellent rendition of the Free Software song.

It is worth noting that Revolution OS won Best Documentary at both the Savannah Film & Video Festival and the Kudzu Film Festival.

All in all a beautiful piece of work worth watching which tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement. One way to support the cause would be by buying a copy of Revolution OS DVD from their website. For now you can watch the documentary below (Courtesy: Google Video).

Update (2nd May 2007): The google video link has been removed because of concerns raised that it could have been pirated and was made available without the permission of the producer. And I believe the right thing to do under the circumstance is to buy the video and watch.
You may listen to an interview with J.T.S Moore here. [Ogg File].

An interesting marketing campaign by Red Hat

What does a company whose main (or only) source of income is from providing services and support for its products to enterprises do when its territory is threatened by competition ? It embarks on a massive marketing campaign highlighting its advantages over similar services and products offered by its competition.

That is exactly what Red Hat is doing but with a difference. It is actively using the free resources available on the Internet to kick start its advertising campaign. More specifically, it has uploaded a collection of videos on Youtube which highlight the advantages of using its latest offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux ver 5.0. The videos are in the garb of "Technology Lessons" and are short, to the point and quite entertaining to watch.

7 Habits for effective text editing 2.0

Being a Vi enthusiast, I am always on the look out for articles related to Vi, or rather Vi's modern avatar Vim - the versatile text editor created by Bram Moolenaar. In the past, this blog has seen a number of posts related to Vim. In fact if you ask me, the proverb "Too much of a thing" doesn't hold true for Vim.

It can easily take you a life time to learn each and every aspect of Vim though in most cases you can get along quite well by mastering just a couple of Vi commands. The sheer number of features and the permutations and combinations are that many. Then you have branched projects which aim to make Vim much more easier for the average computer user. Cream for Vim being a case to the point.

Today I stumbled upon this video which explains the 7 Habits for effective text editing in Vim which I found informative. The video is one of the series of Google TechTalks. In this video, Bram Moolenaar himself talks on the most efficient ways of editing text in Vim. The regular readers of this blog will know that Bram Moolenaar now works for Google.

The preamble of Google TechTalks goes thus :

Google TeckTalks are designed to disseminate a wide spectrum of views on topics including Current Affairs, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Business, Humanities, Law, Entertainment, and the Arts.

The video is a bit large (over 500 MB in size) and stretches over 1 hour. So make sure you have the required bandwidth to view the video. It is every bit worth watching.

Recording videos of your desktop in GNU/Linux

I am sure you have heard the popular saying - "A picture is worth a thousand words". It is always nice to have a medium to show people how a particular task is done. And instead of explaining it through words if we can show it in a dynamic form such as a video or a screencast, it will be better received.

Linux has got a couple of tools which aid one in creating screencasts in a number of formats including flash (swf) and mpeg.

One such tool is 'pyvnc2swf' which can be used effectively with the aid of a vnc server to create screencasts in flash or mpeg video. The site wolphination gives a detailed description of how to set up 'pyvnc2swf' to grab screen shots of the desktop to create flash movies of the same. But one thing that has to be noted though is that since this involves the use of a vnc server, it is important to set a password to connect to the vnc server as other wise, anybody with network access to your computer will be able to easily view and control your desktop.

If you are using 'x11vnc', you can create a password file by running :

# x11vnc -storepassword "password" /path/to/passwordfile

and then start the vnc server as follows:

# x11vnc -rfbauth /path/to/passwordfile

Another tool (not necessarily GPLed but free nevertheless) which I have enjoyed using is Wink. This software has to be downloaded from their website and once downloaded and unpacked, just double-clicking on the wink executable script installer.sh will start the installation. And once installed, you can start creating screencast of the whole desktop, a part of the desktop or just an application. There are options for inserting balloons or call-outs giving details of the steps in-between frames. I really enjoyed using this application and surprisingly, the resulting flash file of the screencast was within the acceptable limits which makes it an ideal tool for creating presentations and visual tutorials for publishing on the web. Unfortunately, the Linux version of Wink (1.5) is a bit behind the Windows version (2.0).

A third option which could hold a lot of promise in the future is a software called Istanbul which could well be integrated in the next version of Gnome. This is a python script which when once started will reside in the Gnome taskbar and one can use it effectively to create a video of the going-ons on the desktop.

So we Linux users do have a number of options for creating screencasts though each one of these lack the desired polish and can't be compared in the same league as those found in say OSX for instance. But work on that end is progressing in the right direction as the above projects would prove and we can look forward to a more polished and better integrated experience in the near future.