Buynov

English translation for this article is not available.

It was an interesting day today. First I learned, that Dimitar Berbatov finally signed with Manchester United, then I read that Google are releasing their own browser, which is big news. The rumors that Google are developing a web browser from 2-3 years ago, because they bought the gbrowser.com domain turned out to be true. Although there is nothing on http://www.gbrowser.com as of today, a browser is already available, just a few hours after I heard about it: http://www.google.com/chrome.

Overall the browser seems to be fast and the interface is quite clean (note that the page tabs are located in the title bar, probably to save some space). There is a Bulgarian localization of the user interface and the Firefox shortcuts are working, for example Ctrl-T to open a new tab, Ctrl-”+” / Ctrl-”-” / Ctrl-0 for zooming, Alt-Home to navigate to the home page.

There seems to be a problem with Flash, however – if you go to the Buynomobile page you can see the Chrome freezing, especially if you try to switch between the different pictures in the gallery. Additionally, the zoom is far from perfect – it looks similar to the one in Firefox 2, and the zoom in Firefox 3 is much better. But this is still a preview release and I am sure that there will be improvements soon.

Anyway, competition is a good thing, it is good to have different options to choose from :).

I created my first Open Source project – Clipboard Tool. Finally, I gave something to the world myself – hopefully it will turn out to be useful ;). The main page is in Bulgarian right now, but I hope to be able to translate it soon. Briefly, this is a tool to convert Cyrillic into Latin letters, process known as transliteration, into the clipboard itself. Additionally, it provides a function to remove formatting from the text you copied into the clipboard.

I host the project on Sourceforge, which provides useful instruments for that purpose, including both CVS and SVN, shell access (SSH, SCP, SFTP). You can use a sub-domain for the project web page – <name of the project>.sourceforge.net. There are also software release management system (upload is a bit strange, through an anonymous FTP), statistics, etc.

I also configured a MediaWiki page for the project which is not available in English yet – http://clipboard-tool.sourceforge.net. MediaWiki installation on Sourceforge is not a trivial task, however. Keep in mind that Sourceforge hosting provides only PHP 4 at your disposal – PHP 5 is not supported. That is why you should use MediaWiki version 1.6.10, next releases require PHP 5. There are additional restrictions for directory access, which makes the installation even more difficult. There are two very useful sites, which will help you install and configure your wiki:

• MediaWiki on SourceForge – The HOWTO – a big thank you to Laszlo, who made the effort to write this article
• Installing Mediawiki on Sourceforge – this site contains a few helpful corrections to the HOWTO above

That’s it – stop wandering around and get to work ;)

Recently, thanks to a colleague of mine, I came across an interview of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, together. You can find it in 10 parts in YouTube. What struck me most is how can such a charismatic and obviously intelligent person as Steve Jobs, to let himself be fooled around by such a dull and simple man as Bill Gates. Here’s what I have in mind:

• Bill Gates looks silly on the next big blow made by Microsoft Conan O’Brian tries to save the day, but he is not very successful at that (although he is funny, as usual ;)). I was very impressed by Bill’s explanation: .. we probably have the wrong remote control … it’s a good thing we only have one thow…
• Bill Gates does not look very smart again, but this time the line is somewhat adequate: That must be why we’re not shipping Windows 98 yet. (like when they shipped it, it was different …)
• Bill Gates talks nonsense: … and had some standard formats (Microsoft and standards ?!?!?!?!) … we need microformats (microformats?!?! WTF?!?!)
• Rain Man (no comment)
• Bill Gates acknowledges Apple’s superiority, just before he stole their thunder …
• Even the dinosaur David Letterman understood what it’s all about.
• Finally, Bill Gates chose … this thing, as his replacement on top of Microsoft.

By the way, all those are first page results, when you search for “Bill Gates” in YouTube (except the last one – it is all over the first few search result pages, when searching for “Steve Ballmer“). Here are the results for “Steve Jobs“:

• Steve Jobs is the first to identify the truth about Microsoft: They just have no taste….They really make third rate products.
• Macworld 1997. Steve Jobs announces to the Apple fans the strategic partnership with the enemy, Microsoft, and that Internet Explorer will be the default browser for the Macintosh. Note how he stays calm while being “Boo”-ed by the crowd. Just imagine if you are in his place …
• Steve Jobs presents iPod for the first time. Phenomenal. Note how consistent and precise is the presentation. I will repeat – PHENOMENAL!
• Steve Jobs presents the iPhone. Similar to the above – in terms of consistency and preciseness. And for not such a great product – at least according to the customers.
• Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 . I was moved to tears … just see it, you won’t regret it. Just imagine Bill Gates holding such a speech – absurd!

I want to state, that I am not an Apple fan. I would probably never buy any of their products. But this does not mean that I can not admire this man.

I will repeat – how can such a charismatic and obviously intelligent person as Steve Jobs, to let himself be fooled around by such a dull and simple man as Bill Gates? For your surprise, I have an answer ;).

Apple did and do everything by themselves – the hardware, the software, the marketing … Have you ever been in the States, have you seen an Apple shop? It is Apple everywhere, they want everything for themselves.

Microsoft were not so selfish

• Microsoft always wanted more for their products – more RAM, more processor power, better video controller. Companies like Intel, AMD, ASUS, Gigabyte made billions of dollars out of business with hardware.
• There were always problems with the security under Windows – a dozen companies making anti-virus software, another few dozens making firewalls and some more making tools for the registry make their living on those flaws – don’t you agree?
• How many games run on Mac OS? Can you name 5? I can name 50, that run on Windows and which I enjoyed playing.

It is that simple – divide and conquer, and do not keep everything for yourself!

I received the newsletter from Sourceforge today and found several interesting things there. First, I found out that 2007 Community Choice Awards are over – you can see the winners and the nominees here. I took a look, as well as in Top 25 Projects and found interesting stuff – some of it I will mention below:

• Launchy - indisputable hit for me. A tool that allows you to start applications without searching through the Start menu of Windows and shortcuts on your desktop. Install the application, launch it and click Alt-Space. Then write a few letters from the name of the application you want to start, and Launchy will let you choose it from a list without having to search for it. And this is not all – you can open a path in Explorer or even write a mathematical expression, Launchy will calculate it for you! Simple but genious :).
• Stylebase for Eclipse - I did not have time to try it, but it looks promising. As it is said on the site:
  

  Stylebase is a reuse repository for architectural models and design patterns and it assists in applying quality-driven architecture design into software engineering.

• Several applications for administration and monitoring of networks:
  • Zenoss Core – application, which uses Python and Zope. I know a few people, that won’t need anything else ;). For the others, here’s a brief information from the official site:
    

    Zenoss Core is an open source IT monitoring product that delivers the functionality to effectively manage the configuration, health, performance of networks, servers and applications through a single, integrated software package.

  • Hobbit Monitor – software for monitoring of servers and networks. More information is available on the official site.
  • Webmin – web based interface for remote administration of Unix systems. For me, it sounds quite promising. A demo is supposed to be available here, but it was not working when I tried it.

If you did not look through the other projects on Sourceforge yet, I advise you to do it – there are quite good ones there. Some people have too much spare time ;). I can dedicate a separate post to the things I use from Sourceforge.