A few predictions from earlier in the year

Ok, some of you may remember I put down my 10 predictions for the coming year. Well, a few of them have come true. Lets see…

2. Apple won’t wait till Christmas to release their new Iphone, which is what they said they will do. – Turns out I was right with this one. They have released the iPhone 3Gs already, halfway through the year
5. I will get my computer working again. – This one did happen, but I didn’t update you with it. I got my money back for my old motherboard, and bought a new one.
6.Google will release 2 more versions of their G range of phones, taking as long to release the source code as they did with the first version. – Turns out this one is right as well, with the release today of the HTC Hero
7. Canonical will make an increasingly stupid name for version 9.10 of Ubuntu. Kranky Kangaroo or something. – This one happened as well. As we all know, it is called Karmic Koala
10. Thunderbird 3.0 might get released…that would be nice…taking long enough. – This one might happen soon, as we currently have the Beta 2 of Thunderbird, and mozilla don’t do many betas (ha…)

So, looks like a very successful year for me so far in predictions. More to come people…

Dropbox, UbuntuOne? No? Ok…how bout Spideroak?

Let me say before any of this – this is not an UbuntuOne rant, like everyone else seems to be doing over at Ubuntu Planet. It just so happened that I just found out about this today.

I have used dropbox for a while – I use it to share things between my Desktop and my uni laptop, and also as a sort of document backup thing. Now, this is all very well and good, but what if dropbox dies? (I know, very unlikely thing, but ya never know, you can never be too careful). Well…Canonical just released UbuntuOne. A cool new dropbox-esk thing.

There are a few problems with UbuntuOne. First of all…it currently runs only on Ubuntu. It can be packaged for, say, fedora or opensuse or something, but as far as I can see, noone has done that yet. Also, it doesn’t run on Windows or Mac, and although I don’t like them as operating systems, we still need to agree that they do actually exist, and we need to create apps for them. They are not my choice of OS, but isn’t diversity everything that Linux stands for? The choice? So we need something that will run on more than just Linux.

Second of all…and I know…this sounds like a pathetic thing to say, but the back-end is not opensource. Now, yes, one might say “Neither is Dropbox”, but dropbox don’t say they stand for freedom and opensource. Canonical have said that it would be easy to create a server very similar to UbuntuOne, because it is based on, I think they said iFolder, am not sure though.

In this case, why the heck is it closed? What is the point in closing it, if it is easy to put the exact same thing together? I do use some proprietry things (dropbox, nvidia drivers) but I object to a company saying “We do opensource” and having something closed. This is, IMHO, pathetic.

So, I’m not happy with UbuntuOne, so what will I use as my dropbox’s “backup”? Well, Paul Mellors posted about SpiderOak, a new dropbox-esk filesharing backup thingy.

So, I tried it out, and I’m very happy. I much prefer it to dropbox, in fact. First of all, you have none of this dropbox folder nonesence. That drives me insane. I don’t want to link everything to my backups, thats stupid. I want them to backup where they are, and SpiderOak does this. Which is brilliant.

SpiderOak, like dropbox, comes with a free 2GB (which is all I need for my documents and pictures just now) and has a paid 100GB service (and 200GB, 300GB etc etc) for $10 per 100GB that you want. As mentioned, this works out at under £7 per 100GB of space that you want. Not bad, one has to say. Better than dropbox anyway.

SpiderOak allows you to add as many computers as you want to your account (Windows, Mac, Linux) and just syncs whatever folders you want on all your computers, and puts them wherever you want. I think you can also choose NOT to sync specific folders with specific computers, but will have to test this out (Ooooo…I can feel a sequel post coming on).

Finally…it is not opensource, but they are going to opensource it soon, which is good. So…for everyone who wants a (soon to be opensource) alternative for Dropbox, but isn’t running Ubuntu (or doesnt want the limitations of UbuntuOne), but doesn’t have the money to spend on their own server, I would recommend this highly.

Video of the Week: Bumptop

I haven’t done a Video of the Week for a while, so decided to give you another one. Enjoy this super fantastic, amazing, special great video, and get as excited as I am. I sooo can’t wait for this.

They are currently in Private Beta with the Windows version, working on the Mac version, and will start work on the Linux version soon.

Hope you enjoy this.

Microsoft decides what is best for you.

Ok, so I was doing a wee bit of research on Windows 7 (previously codenamed Vienna), the new version of Windows that is meant to come out in first quarter of 2010. (So…2013 then…). And I found a lot of interesting things about it. First of all, they will be introducing some more 3D stuff, which is annoying because soon I won’t be the only person in my uni lectures editing a word processor, then spinning round a sphere to my calculator, back again, then closing it all down in a big ball of fire.

But more importantly, I have once again heard something from Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft.

This is going to be the new taskbar for Windows (hmmm reminds me of a certain KDE kicker) which is radically different from even the one in Vista, never mind the old XP and 2000/98/95 style taskbar. Now, whether or not you think this is good is irrelevant because

“there will be no ability to enable the old taskbar since, in Microsoft’s opinion, the new taskbar’s leap in usability negates the need for a “less-able” option.”

What can I say? I am sorry for doubting you oh master of computers…what you say is correct…I will obey. I cannot be right about my personal opinions on what a taskbar should be like.

Goodness me, who are they and what gives them the right to tell me what my computer should be like? This is one huge reason why I turned away from windows in the first place. They say…it happens.

Another couple of interesting things about Windows 7 is that you can very quickly resize a window to half-maximised (ok, sounds fantastic…I will use that very often) and a number of programs (such as notepad) will incorporate the ribbon-style menu that Microsoft Office has been infected with.

Also, on a sidenote, Microsoft haven’t given up on their stupid I’m a PC ads yet. Look at what they have outside an Apple store. I’m not sure where exactly, but somewhere in America I believe. (Where else…)