I was a hard core Netscape user before the days of FireFox and before that I was all about IE4 . (Sorry for the re-run but Kayla didn’t let us sleep this weekend!) So I have realized change is good and you live and you learn. So when I heard about Flock, I decided to give it a go. For you Face-bookers. Flickr’ers and Bloggers you can take advantage of the built in blog editor, Facebook galore in your sidebar and the ability to view yours and your friends photo streams right from Flock. Its neat, has a cool GUI. Flock is Fire Fox like but quicker and customized for what I do. I really dig it so far.

Oh did I mention it not only uses existing Firefox plugins but has its own as well??

This truly is the social web browser. There are downfalls to parts of it like no image uploading using their blogger interface but hey, this is only a beta. It does show integration with the top blogging software and has lots of new stuff I will be exploring throughout the week. If you want to give Flock a try you can grab it here.

From their website:

Flock is a social web browser based on the open source project Mozilla. It can be called a social browser, because of its tight integration with many social networking and social media services. Changing the purpose of a browser from a non-integrated window into the web to a more participatory portal to your favorite interactive sites, Flock seeks to gain significant market share by bringing your favorite social applications one step closer.

With Flock users can do many community involved activities such as uploading photos directly to Photobucket and Flickr, accessing news aggregation services, or using blogging tools. A full list of social media/networking extensions for Flock can be found here.

_TheSocialBrowsingAdmiN_

For those of you out there still living in the dark ages, and still using Telnet on Windows because you haven’t found a more viable alternative (You know who you are) We have some good news for you!

Maybe you haven’t decided to switch to a more secure solution because you use Windows Servers and Windows hasn’t adopted using SSH.

Maybe you think SSH is only for Unix/Linux.

Well, your excuses are no longer good here sonny boy. If you haven’t heard there is an OpenSSH port for Windows. Now you can still use the terminal remote access method, but you won’t be sending your login credentials and important information across the wire in plain text.

OpenSSH provides full support for SSH/SCP/SFTP. So what are you waiting for? Download OpenSSH and secure your servers.

As we always say at Asktheadmin.com The Safer the better! If we don’t have to send our credentials as plain text, we are all for it. After all we do know how to use a SNIFFER!

From Their Website:

OpenSSH for Windows

OpenSSH for Windows is a free package that installs a minimal OpenSSH server and client utilities in the Cygwin package without needing the full Cygwin installation. This is similar to the package formerly available from NetworkSimplicity.

The OpenSSH for Windows package provides full SSH/SCP/SFTP support. SSH terminal support provides a familiar Windows Command prompt, while retaining Unix/Cygwin-style paths for SCP and SFTP.

Catch the download page here. [Via SourceForge]

_TheSecureAdmiN_

Hey everyone, it’s Scott from AndroidGuys here. Thanks to Karl and the other Admins here, I’m back with another article!

Yesterday, we put an article up on AndroidGuys where we talked about Google’s foray into the television world. I’d like to expound upon that piece and explain how open source could radically change the television and advertising industry.

Google’s $10 Million Android Developers Challenge is not only the open source platform that will help change the way mobile devices are designed and used. It is my opinion that it is more specifically the basis for the way people will stay in touch and get information. Google was never really going to come out with the iPhone killer. I think they have their sites on much bigger things. They’d rather change the way you receive your content, be it television, web, email, photos, etc. Instead of focusing on entirely on the mobile industry, Google is also evaluating the television industry. That’s right, we’re already talking about AndroidTV. Is the day that far off where you will be able to sync your favorite shows, emails, and notes between your TV and your mobile device? I don’t think it is. There are already plenty of ways hardware devices can sync up; Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, and of course using the trusty data cable.

By asking developers to write programs around their open source backbone, Google will be able to seamlessly integrate the best features between your phone and television. Today’s cable boxes are more or less computers. They come preloaded with a few limited API’s like a menu setup, a program guide, the DVR software, and a few customer service feature, like account information. Now imagine what you could do with that box if it were open source. There are already scores of “roll your own” DVR interfaces that you can make using your PC or Mac.

Let’s imagine a scenario here. You’re in a fantasy football league and are following your players as closely as possible. Why shouldn’t you be able to watch a pre-recorded program on your TiVo and, at the same time, have a widget display your players’ performances at the bottom of the screen? Stock tickers, real-time weather conditions and traffic are the tip of the iceberg. In the age of micro-blogging, wouldn’t make sense to be able to see what your friends are doing right now without having to log online? Your Twitter widget tells you that Craig is on his way home from work. Maybe a notification when Ted is logged into Facebook. Maybe a popup that alerts you to the fact that someone just left you feedback on eBay. Folks, it’s all going to happen. And very soon.

Need more convincing? The guy behind Android? Andy Rubin. Take a look at his past endeavors. You might recall a little project he was involved in a few years back called WebTV. Oh yeah, for those of you who are currently unemployed, Google’s hiring for a television technology software engineer position in Mountain View, CA.

My grin is bigger than yours.

Scott | AndroidGuys.com | chewie77@gmail.com

Hey Boys and Girls,

Shhh, this one is a little secret for all you hardcore aTa fans…

We here at www.asktheadmin.com have an inside scoop that is sure to be the talk of the (virtual) town about Google and their new Gphone.

We all know it’s reality that Google is, in fact, working on their own phone. It’s been buzzing for months. Can you say G-Phone?

We also know, for fact, that The Big Goog have been trying to get their hands on their own cell-radio frequency from the FCC. This has been old news for months. Can you say 700 Mhz?
We also know that GOOG have been working heavily on an operating system for phone hardware. Can you say Android?

But what we have also cleverly found out, from a source who REALLY prefers we leave her name and whereabouts undisclosed, is that Google really is looking to move in on, and compete with, all the other big cellphone companies.

Our source works for a sub-contractor for one of the PR companies working for Google, and while details are shaky at best, I did catch something about new branding, FREE cell service, and one of the biggest, single-handed emergences of a ridiculously strong competitor, and more importantly a huge threat, to EVERY cellphone service provider in the NATION.

What was more important than the facts themselves are the details. How about the fact that it was requested that these new branding schemes be done with great haste, and that a considerable amount of money was spent into developing these new brand schemes quite richly and deeply. Almost like they paid extra, like a rush fee, to be sure the whole idea gets pushed to it’s end, and double time!

I don’t know about you Boys and Girls, but this sounds like Google is about to make some serious moves towards becoming their own, end to end, cellphone company, from the phone right down to the airwaves. Whats craziest is that they want it to be free (and ad-based, of course). Not only will it be their own cellphone service, and harware manufacturer, but they are essentially BUILDING their own ad-market from scratch. POOF!

Can you say anti-trust? Can you say market upturn?
Can you dare to say free cellphone service and wireless internet?

Google dares!

In the immortal words of William Shakespeare, and later Aldous Huxley – “Oh Brave New World that has such people in it.”

Chew on that.
Peace

Commodore 64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on)
1

Edit – As Reader Gavin pointed out Google is laying their own fiber under the ocean see here.

Good afternoon! My name is Scott Webster and I am one of the administrators over at AndroidGuys.com. I’d like to thank Karl for letting me fill in today as a guest blogger.

I’m here to talk briefly about the current state of Smartphones as well as what we might come to expect from Android and the capability of open source phones.

As of right now, there are only three major options being used in the US for smartphones and PDA phones. You have RIM’s Blackberry, Microsoft Windows Mobile, and Apple’s iPhone/OSX. Sure, you also have niche devices like Helio’s Ocean and the T-Mobile Sidekick, but predominantly, these three are what makes up the high end phone market today. Overseas however is a different story. Nokia and Symbian have pretty much dominated the industry and is slowly seeing market share build over here. While each of these platforms is unique, they share very similar features from one to the next. Higher end camera’s, internal memory, and the ability to install software are just three things that separate them from your mom’s flip phone. It sounds great to be able to install software on the phone, but it’s not as easy as it would initially seem. This is where the drawbacks start.

For years, Blackberry devices were almost locked airtight when it came to 3rd party applications. It is only recently that you can point your browser to a site and get games, tools, and enhancements for your device. Microsoft has been steadily improving their Windows OS and offering two lines options depending on your style of handset; Smartphone and Pocket PC software. Apple came along and shook the industry up a little bit this summer by introducing us to phones using the same user-friendly, sexy OSX that graces many of their computers.

With an entirely touch based phone, it opened up a lot of doors and enticed your tech enthusiasts and prosumers. This was the way of the future, right?

The iPhone was not without its detractors though. There were two major gripes coming from the community. First was that there was no way to add applications to the phone. A user was confined to the pre-installed package of programs, no matter how nice or easy to use. Secondly, people were turned off by the fact that they had to sign up to AT&T for service. With a phone already selling at $400-$600, people were not ready to plunk down another $150-$200 to get out of a contract with their current provider. So what happened next? To address these problems, people began dissecting the phone literally from day one. They were looking for ways to ‘open’ the phone up and unlock it. ‘If it takes a SIM card, it has to work on T-Mobile or another carrier’ was the general consensus. It didn’t take long for people to figure out how to jailbreak their handsets. Now, it’s a game of cat and mouse with Apple releasing their updates and hackers releasing patches. In the meanwhile, Apple comes out and says that they will be releasing a developers kit next year so that users can enjoy new ways of taking advantage of all that the iPhone offers.

Enter Google and the Open Handset Alliance.

For the last two years, people have speculated as to what Google’s role might be in the cell phone industry. Months ago, when the news started to really pour in that a ‘gPhone’ was in the works, the blogs and tech sites began to wonder as to what this phone would look like and how it would work. Mock-ups and ‘leaks’ were hitting the internet on a regular basis. As time went, the industry conversations gravitated towards not just one handset called a gPhone, but rather a few models using a Google based operating system. Was Google creating a brand new operating system for phones? Well, yes and no.

Google was in fact working with a couple dozen other companies on an operating system. An open source one to be certain. This list of companies behind this project reads like a “Who’s Who” in the technology industry. In the handset corner, you have Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola. In the carrier corner, you’ll notice Sprint and T-Mobile. Looking further down the list, you’ll see other major names like eBay, Intel, nVidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. This group of companies is known as the Open Handset Alliance.

So what happens when all these guys come to the same party? Magic. What else would you expect from today’s movers and shakers? I can almost guarantee that these companies have their hands in at least one thing you touch or use every day. We have total confidence that Android will not just become a major player in the phone industry. We believe that just by merely existing, they will revolutionize the market and force some of today’s names to either adapt their own model or risk extinction. Google and their friends have been doing their homework and listening to people for a lot longer than you think.

If you look through AskTheAdmin’s posts on open source, it’s almost universally in favor of it. Take a look at some of the software you’re probably using right now. Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, Flock, home-brewed DVR’s, XBOX Media Center, etc. Let’s also consider what happens when you work on projects socially like Wikipedia. The power and potential is limitless. I don’t know about you, but I can’t even imagine the kind of phone I will be holding a year from now.

Please stop by AndroidGuys.com if you’d like to stay up on developments. Also, please be sure to leave us feedback.

Thanks again to everyone at AskTheAdmin for their support!

Scott Webster | androidguys@gmail.com

(Edit From TheAdmiN: Do you guys like what you see? Do you want us to make this a weekly spot for The AndroidGuys?)

I was a hard core Netscape user before the days of FireFox and before that I was all about IE4 . So I have realized change is good and you live and you learn. So when I heard about Flock, I decided to give it a go. For you Face-bookers. Flickr’ers and Bloggers you can take advantage of the built in blog editor, Facebook galore in your sidebar and the ability to view yours and your friends photo streams right from Flock. Its neat, has a cool GUI. Flock is Fire Fox like but quicker and customized for what I do. I really dig it so far.

Oh did I mention it not only uses existing Firefox plugins but has its own as well??

This truly is the social web browser. There are downfalls to parts of it like no image uploading using their blogger interface but hey, this is only a beta. It does show integration with the top blogging software and has lots of new stuff I will be exploring throughout the week. If you want to give Flock a try you can grab it here.

From their website:

Flock is a social web browser based on the open source project Mozilla. It can be called a social browser, because of its tight integration with many social networking and social media services. Changing the purpose of a browser from a non-integrated window into the web to a more participatory portal to your favorite interactive sites, Flock seeks to gain significant market share by bringing your favorite social applications one step closer.

With Flock users can do many community involved activities such as uploading photos directly to Photobucket and Flickr, accessing news aggregation services, or using blogging tools. A full list of social media/networking extensions for Flock can be found here.

_TheSocialBrowsingAdmiN_

IBM/Lotus has fired a shot across the bow of MS at their flagship Office.

I give you Lotus Symphony!

Totally free and easy to download @ 136MB for the file.

Symphony is based on OpenOffice.org and the Eclipse framework and is meant not only to give consumers and businesses an alternative to Microsoft Office, but also to promote the use of ODF (Open Document for XML), an XML-based standard for documents approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). “The end goal here is the proliferation of the open standard,” Rhodin said.

Microsoft Office 2007, which has more than 90 percent market share, does not natively support ODF and instead uses the company’s OOXML (Open XML) format, which failed to pass a recent ISO vote for standardization.

And for the record, IBM/Lotus has had 100,000 downloads of the product in its first week of availability.

I have downloaded it and gave it a mild test run this morning. It is quicker to open than other distros of Open Office and a lot easier on the eyes for sure. I’ll be playing with it as much as I can over the next few weeks to see if it is a viable alternative to Orifice.

PS: This product is still in Beta but no bugs or crashes found on my system thusfar.

So who’s ready for Zimbra to go mainstream? It might just become reality. Looks like Yahoo is scooping them up for a measly $350 million.

We have covered Zimbra here and here, here and here. The first article is a link to their free test drive where you get the feel for their product. A lot of you guys and girls love Zimbra, How do you feel a
bout Yahoo’s acquisition of it? Will they keep it separate or will they integrate ‘Zimbraesque’ features into their web mail? Well, Yahoo, just get back to us when you have finalized your Exchange killer – K?

This news comes to us at the same time that IBM and Google separately announce new and improved products to rival Microsoft’s Office Monopoly.

It seems like everyone wants to throw their hat in the ring. What do you guys think?? Hit us up in the comments!

TheOpenSourceAdmiN

For those of you that have heard of MythTv you know it is a free open source DVR software package. We love Free over @ AtA so we bring you this release for your perusal. You can not only achieve TiVo like DVR functionality it gives you so much more like an on screen RSS reader, access to your recorded content and much more. If you want to take control of your DVR and make it into a power house of linux goodness check out MythTv. Powerful + free + open source = Stupid Phat ( that is a g00d thing )

The Program was pretty great last we looked at it and now there are lots of improvements such as:

• Faster startup of mythfrontend and mythtv-setup from changes to theme prescaling.
• Improved default theme images with better scaling and anti-aliasing
• Backported XMLTV changes to help former Zap2It users switch to a new grabber
• Improved –version output, including the branch name.
• Entire UPnP stack from trunk backported to address numerous UPnP problems

And if none of that perks up those ears of yours how about no monthly charges for the TiVo guide or no more depending on your cable companies service for their dvr? If you never heard of it check it out and if you are using it – Let us know in the comments!

_TheAdmiN_

Edit: We really liked this article comparing mythTv distros…

Time for some technical blogging.

Today’s topic….Linux.

Some of you may have heard of Linux. Here’s what it is in a nutshell….An operating system for a computer, not unlike Windows of Mac. But there is a difference…it can be free!

There are a lot of fun things with Linux and a lot of distributions that are freely available out there. But there is one in particular that I’d like to talk about.

Ubuntu.

I’ve tried various flavors of Linux in search of an OS that I may potentially use to replace my home Winblows PC with. This is it. I’ve tried several Fedora distros, Red Hat, and a few other smaller, possibly defunct distributions. But Ubuntu is the real deal.

The installation is easy. Pretty simple GUI install for the n00b if you will. Pretty straight forward. And it will work on low end machines and most PCs that I’ve tried.

Now the problems with n00b linux installs is hardware compatibility and the learning curve of getting used to the new OS. Ubuntu really digs into it. I did have a problem with the previous version going on a laptop with an Intel video chip and full compatibility. But that is gone now.

The other thing that is tough for people is the learning curve. It takes a while to find applications you want to use and how to use them. Installation of an application can be tricky at time if you’re shy of digging on the net and tinkering around. As well as the applications you’ve grown accustomed to are simply not there.

However there are alternatives, and that is what Linux and the Open Source movement is all about. Use OpenOffice instead of MS Office, although you can use MS Office with WINE…long story…not for the faint of heart.

As far as email…you can use Thunderbird from Mozilla.com. Web browsing is best done through Firefox, also from Mozilla…and again, all free!

There are a lot of other gadgets and cool pieces of software within Ubuntu that need to be explored and tinkered with. Don’t be shy. Find an older PC, download it, burn it to a disc and give it a shot. Take the time to learn this OS as it can be a viable alternative for most home uses than getting put into the revolving door of Microsoft’s every couple years need to upgrade hardware and OS just to keep up.

Or if you have the means, Dell has just begun selling Ubuntu preloaded on laptops and desktops.

For those of you out there still living in the dark ages, and are still using Telnet because you haven’t found a viable alternative (You know who you are). Maybe you haven’t decided to switch to a more secure solution because you use Windows Servers and Windows hasn’t adopted using SSH. Maybe you think SSH is only for Unix/Linux. Well, your excuses are no longer good here. If you haven’t heard about it, there is an OpenSSH port for Windows. Now you can still use a terminal remote access method, but you won’t be sending your login credentials and important information across the wire in plain text. OpenSSH provides full support for SSH/SCP/SFTP. So no more excuses, download OpenSSH and secure your servers.

As we always say at Asktheadmin.com The Safer the better! If we don’t have to send our credentials as plain text, we are all for it. After all we do know how to use a SNIFFER!