Google has recently released Google Earth 5.2.  There are some really nice new features including visualization of tracks captured by GPS devices.

Installing under Fedora Linux can be a bit of a challenge if you have SELinux enabled. 

What is SELinux?

SELinux is feature which provides the ability to have access control policies which confines processes and users to the minimum required access level.  For example the httpd process can be confines to only have access to files under it’s document root.  Because of this confinement, there is a decreased risk if the httpd process were to become compromised and damage due to a security flaw is minimized.

Making Google Earth work with SELinux

The default install of Google Earth does not properly set the proper SELinux access controls and so if you have SELinux enabled, Google Earth will not start properly. One option with I’m sure that many people have done is to completely disable SELinux.  Although this approach will get Google Earth working, it eliminates the benefits of SELinux and makes your computer less secure than it could be.

Recent versions of SELinux have a tool which gives suggestions of how to fix problems when violations occur.  However on Fedora 13, the suggested command of ‘restorecon /usr/local/google-earth/googleearth-bin‘ didn’t fix the problem. I was still getting the error:

“./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: ./libcommon_webbrowser.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied”

The key was to allow text relocation for the lib files in the install directory so typing in:

“chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/local/google-earth/lib*”

Now Google Earth runs beautifully under SELinux.

Browsing the web can be a quiet experience. Except for the odd Flash based video, web pages are typically quiet and don’t have any sounds associated with them.

The new W3C HTML 5 specification introduced a new audio tag which finally allows web pages to play sounds natively without having to resort to plugins such Flash or Java.

Taking it to the next level

Following on the introduction of basic audio, the W3C has formed and Audio Incubator Group which according to the group’s charter will explore possibilities of reading or writing raw audio and synthesizing speech or sound.

Members of the incubator group include Mozilla, the BBC and Google.

I think that it will be interesting follow this group and see what this incubator group comes up with.

Fredericton, New Brunswick has been featured as a Google Earth Cities in 3D success story.

In January 2010 over 100 3D representations of buildings were added to Google Earth. These models are photo-textured and have quite a bit of detail in them.

The City of Fredericton in collaboration with the nearby Canadian Forces Base Gagetown’s Army Learning Support Center for Tactics School developed the models. The city provided a lot of the data and the Armed Forces group created the models which they use for simulations and tactical training.  They also integrated the 3D models into a first person game to teach tactics and for simulating various possible scenarios.

By uploading and sharing the models with the rest of the world through Google’s cities in 3D program, the groups have allowed others to get a different perspective. As a fringe benefit, it strengthens Fredericton’s reputation as a city on the forefront which understands, promotes and uses technology in everyday life. Considering that Fredericton is a high tech city and home to IT firms such as RIM, CGI, Radian6 and the National Research Council, this is a good reputation to promote.

The corner of King Street and York Street in 3D

The Android mobile platform has a lot going for it. It has a large mind share thanks in part to its huge backer, Google.  Android also has something that Apple’s iPhone platform lacks: Diversity in devices and vendors.

The Open Handset Alliance which backs the Android platform consists of 65 members from various parts of the mobile industry such as handset manufacturers such as HTC, Sony and Toshiba  along with semiconductor companies such as Intel and Nvidia to software providers such as Google and eBay to mobile network providers such as NTT Docomo and Verizon.

The members’ diverse backgrounds, business models and needs ensures a healthy mix of devices, services and software for the platform. Although a healthy diverse mix of devices and implementations is healthy, it can also lead to problems such as fragmentation.

Platform Fragmentation

Fragmentation can occur when different implementations have different core feature set and different user experiences.  With the iPhone platform, once you’ve used an iPhone you know that all of the iPhone devices will behave the same and run the same applications and have a similar user experience.  With Android however, you can get radically different experiences based on handset being used as well as the Android version being used.

Some handset vendors have implemented their own UI customizations such as Mototola’s Blur and HTC’s Sense which alter the user experience even more and can prevent or delay uptake of new operating system revisions as they are released.  Depending on the customizations, developers must also consider how their applications might work in each of these customized environments. As any web developer knows, having to support multiple browsers is not a fun tasks. Supporting multiple slightly differing mobile platforms isn’t considered fun either. Worrying how you application will look or run at 10 different possible resolutions is much more of a pain than iPhone’s 1 resolution fits all model.

As users may be stuck waiting to a handset vendor to provide OS upgrades, they may be unable to install of use some applications. For example, the recent release of Google Earth will only run on Android 2.1 or later which most Android handsets are not yet running.

Combating Fragmentation

Google has started trying to address the fragmentation issue. One of the approaches is to decouple upgrade of major applications and components from the Operating System. By being able to upgrade major components independently, users could simply download the latest and greatest without having to wait for their slow vendor to provide upgrades. Being able to easily upgrade the browser or the input functionality could reduce the number of people running different feature sets and different levels of code.  If you can run all of the latest applications and code, do you really care if you are on the latest OS or not?

Google has also stated that development and releases of the core Android OS will most likely slow down soon as the platform has matured and there will be more focus on applications and features built upon the more stable core.

Hopefully Android users will be able to get the best of both worlds, a diverse set of handsets, applications that will run on all devices and not have to wonder if they are betting on the right handset vendor.

Research in Motion makers of the ever popular Blackberry has announced that it has purchased QNX Software Systems from Harman international.

QNX which is based in Ottawa, Ontario was formed in 1980 and is a leading provider of embedded systems. QNX has a very strong real-time operating system (RTOS) and has especially been a strong player in the in-car entertainment sector.

There is speculation that RIM will attempt to create a more seamless integration between it flagship Blackberries and in car systems. This integration could lead superior user experience which could help differentiate RIM from Apple iPhone or Google’s Andoid platform.

Then again perhaps it is just a cheap source of patent protection.

Will Internet Explorer 9 finally pose a challenge to the technically superior upstart web browsers from Google, Mozilla and Apple?

Microsoft recently revealed a platform preview of its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) web browser at its MIX10 conference. The preview browser is far from complete with a lot of the user interface components such as tabs and navigation buttons but it does show off the renderer and the Javascript engine which allows developers to see what features are coming in the future.  Microsoft’s IE team has also committed to update the preview every 8 weeks which will allow users to see the progression of IE9 development.

Microsoft getting a new (standards-based) religion?

It appears that IE 9 will finally adopt and comply with some of the web standards.  The initial preview scores a respectable 55//100 on the CSS Acid 3 test which is a huge improvement over IE8’s score of 20/100.  Support for some new HTML 5 features is also present in the IE9 preview build such as the much touted video tag as well as SVG support.  The video tag will have support for the H.264 codec which is also being supported by Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

Microsoft has also improved the performance of the rendering engine by leveraging available hardware.  Graphics cards will now help offload some video and graphics processing from the CPU.  IE9 has also been made increasingly multithreaded and optimized to take advantage of multiple cores in a system.  For example the Javascript engine can use a separate core to compile Javascript code in preparation for execution which leaves the primary core available to do additional processing.  In fact, Javascipt performance has been increased so much that on certain tests, IE 9 is faster than Firefox.

Will a strong IE9 release slow the momentum of the competing browsers which have been nibbling away the market share from Microsoft?  A strong IE will definitely reduce the incentive for people to switch to an alternative browser.

One caveat which may play a factor in IE9 adoption is that Internet Explorer 9 will not be compatible with Windows XP.

Ars Technica has a great write up on the preview : Platform Preview gives Web developers first taste of IE9.

After a long wait, Canadian can fully get aboard the Google Android train.  Google has announced that Canada will get paid apps and that the Nexus One is available on Rogers in Canada as well as also being available on AT&T’s network.  The Nexus One is available in Canada for $529 USD from http://www.google.com/phone, As did our American friends, you need to create a Google Checkout account to purchase the phone.

Previously, Canadian developers were prevented from putting their Andoid applications for sale on the Android Marketplace. Hopefully the increased international availability of the Android Marketplace, the platform and the Nexus One will increase the availability of applications and adoption of the Android by phone manufacturer and users alike.  Developers might also have more incentive to develop for Android with a larger target user base.

As an open mobile platform, Android is different from the iPhone where every application is vetted by Apple and users can only go through Apple’s app store to get applications.  Android Marketplace showcases Android applications but users and developers are not forced into using the Marketplace.  This differentiator can be very important to some folks.  Indeed it appears that Android’s open platform has already attracted a new high profile employee in Tim Bray.

Google has recently introduced a new and interesting Labs feature for its popular Google Maps service.  In the same fashion as its Google Labs offering, Google Maps Labs allows users to opt-in to beta versions of features currently in development or testing.

By clicking on the little green beaker in the top right hand corner (currently with “New!” in red beside it), you are given the option of enabling beta features currently ranging from the extremely useful Click and Zoom which allows quick zooming to a selected rectangular area to the interesting rotatable maps to the humourous ‘BETA’ feature which as far as I can tell, simply adds a beta graphic to the Google Maps logo – as the features states: “Gmail isn’t the only one that can enjoy a BETA tag.”.

To have beta map features enabled for future visits, users must be signed into their Google account.

The intention with Google Maps Labs is that popular and well tested features would get integrated into the full Google Maps version.  Even if none of the features make it past the beta stage, it is still interesting to see some of the possibilities.

For more info see:  Google LatLong: Introducing Google Maps Labs, your passport to a world of new features.

The Trinity Development Group has a map of planned development of the Corbett Centre.  According to the map it appears that the electronics big box store Best Buy is planning to set up in Fredericton.  Other stores that appear to be slated for the Corbett Centre include home fashion store Bouclair and a new Tim Hortons. The long rumoured Tim Hortons store would fill in the gap (according to some Tim’s addicts) created by the closing of the Regent Mall location last year.

The Trinity site claims that these new stores will open in the spring of 2010 while Costco’s planned warehouse store is marked as a highly unlikely Fall 2009.  Perhaps these are construction start dates as opposed to store opening dates.

New Competition in Town?

A new Best Buy store would likely be the second store in Atlantic Canada after a recently opened store in Dartmouth, NS. A new Best Buy which sells laptops, big screen televisions, digital cameras and other electronics and opening would not only bring some needed competition to the current electronics giant in town Future Shop but it would also be a win for Fredericton in the ongoing battle with Moncton and Saint John to attract retailers to their cities.  Is Fredericton gaining an upper hand in attracting retailers to its city?

Are there any other retailers that you’d like to see open up in Fredericton?

Mobile review provided a sneak peak at the soon to be released Nokia RX-51 aka Nokia N900. This new internet tablet / phone which has also been referred to as Rover, is a follow on to their N810 internet tablet which received critical acclaim but remained more of a niche product with out the phone connectivity that Nokia is famous for.

The RX-51 review has tons of pictures of the device and some of the screenshots of the user interface.  Since this is the first internet tablet from Nokia to use the Fremantle or Maemo 5 software, many people are curious how much change will be ushered in with the new operating system and device.  The UI definitely looks more polished and a lot slicker than the older Diablo release (4.2) but it is hard to determine the user experience without having the software in your hands.  The hardware looks very similar to the older N810 with a slide out keyboard and 800 x 480 resolution screen but there have been some improvements such as the included 5 megapixel camera.

Will it compare to the iPhone?

As I mentioned in a previous post about the Nokia  N900 and Fremantle, the N900 / RX-51 is also the first of the N series internet tablets to include phone capabilities.  Previous versions only had wi-fi connectivity and as such were not direct competitors with Apple’s iPhone or RIM’s Blackberrry devices.  It will be interesting to see if this new Nokia mobile offering will provide some competition from the other smartphone players.

The Obama administration in the United States is forging ahead with a policy to open up access to as much government data as possible in open formats for people to use.  The website http://www.data.gov will be used to host and disseminate government created data.

What is Canada’s position on open access?

Canada on the other seems to be trying to lock government files and data away and often require a ransom to be paid to get access to it. A large proportion of data generated by government agencies require payment to access. For example, Statistics Canada create maps of postal code to census boundaries but charges $10000 to download it? Why should I have to pay to get information that Statistics Canada collected using my taxpayer dollars?  Why should I have to file an access to information request (and pay $5) to get information about government dealings? Shouldn’t the default status of information created by the government be free and widely available? Do only the rich have the right to information?  Not only would opening up database, documents and other available data increase transparency, it would also remove economic barriers for companies and individuals that could benefit from the amazing amount of data that could be made available to the public.

Vancouver opens its data

The city of Vancouver has adopted a similar strategy of opening up its data and information as the Obama administration in the United States. Additionally, Vancouver is also in the process of examining open source software and how it could be use at the municipal level.  Their strategy has already generated  some interesting ideas such a garbage reminder service.

Will Canada be left behind?

Hopefully we  will see other Canadian cities, provinces and the federal governments be forward looking and follow Vancouver’s example.  There is an enormous untapped potential for using data that is generated and currently locked away in vaults, behind firewall or simply in proprietary formats that require expensive software to use. Who knew that opening up GIS signals and data to free civilian use would result in such a large number of indispensable and powerful inventions that build on GIS. Just as democracy opened up the political and decision making process to all citizens, opening up information to all empowers all citizens and not just the elite royalty that can afford it.

Hopefully Canada will be able to realize its potential.

I love this YouTube video.  Very powerful and well done. It has been online since 2007 but the video gives a great view of why the computers and the web are so powerful. You also can’t help but wonder how much more untapped potential there is to be found.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Fredericton, New Brunswick based PQA – Professional Quality Assurance has announced its intention to grow its workforce from the current 91 to almost 400 over the next three years.  The province of New Brunswick has announced an assistance program for PQA which will see an average of $7544 per full time permanent employee that PQA hires over the next three years.  This assistance is for training and equipment for these new hires.

Who are PQA?

Founded in 1997, PQA is a software quality assurance vendor which provides services such as software testing, QA consultants, content quality assurance and e-learning or training development services. They currently have three offices with their headquarters in Fredericton and satellite offices in Moncton, New Brunswick and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.  With this latest expansion there are hints that PQA will open additional offices in other New Brunswick locations, likely in Saint John but possibly in smaller and economically hard hit cities in northern NB such as Miramichi or Cambellton.

Software Testing is a dirty job

As many software developers know, software testing is very difficult as you become accustomed to the warts and consciously or sub-consciously avoid trouble areas or scenarios in your application when testing.  In addition, software testing, developing training materials and documentation are often pushed back to the end of the development cycle are are often the first tasks to get short changed when the pressure to ship starts to build. By farming out these tasks to a third party, your developers are free to concentrate on developing quality and compelling software.

A fresh, experienced and independent point of view

Just as a third party audit of financial records is a good idea (and often necessary), a third party software quality assurance can give your code a professional and independent critique before it ships to customers. An outsiders’ fresh view of your software may reveal omissions in your documentation or bring to light implicit or explicit assumptions that were made in the software design and development cycle. Identifying and addressing these issues prior to shipping can save a lot of money in fixing software as well as in support costs. Even more valuable than saving on support costs, by fixing problems you can ship a higher quality product and enhance the customer experience. Creating a quality experience for your customer can raise your reputation and brand. Remember: “Every Touch Counts“.

Third party QA can identify software bugs, performance and scalability problems, user experience issues, user interface inconsistencies and documentation issues.  Although some of these problems can be identified and addressed in house, a more thorough assessment by a third party quality assurance vendor can make your product that much more stable and bulletproof as well as give your product that extra usability edge over the competition.

Money well spent I’d say.

Created in 2006 as a way of bringing people with common interests together, Mugshot was designed by RedHat as an open source site. The intentions was to allow interaction between users using not only its own site but by plugging into other networking sites such as Facebook and del.icio.us. Mugshot included the ability to chat between users, share links, facebook updates and read RSS feeds.

Mugshot did have some innovative features such as a desktop client which allowed quick and easy access to network updates and to quickly post items or share links with your friends or interest groups.

Where did it go?

Despite some initial promise, in April of this year, the website went offline with a “Mugshot is currently not running.” message and as of earlier this May, the URLs for http://www.mugshot.org get redirected to http://www.redhat.com.
I have been unable to find any official confirmation that Mugshot has been killed and will not come back but it does not look promising.

Why did it fail?

Unfortunately Mugshot never seemed to get much traction outside of a small group of Linux (mainly RedHat) enthusiasts.  Whether it was a lack of marketing or a neglect of website and network can be debated but after its initial launch period, RedHat almost seemed to ignore Mugshot perhaps hoping that organic growth could occur with open source community updating and introducing new features.  Competition from Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook may have also helped put Mugshot on the chopping block.

Another part of the reasoning behind RedHat’s apparent neglect and eventual abandonment of Mugshot is that the social network concept never seemed to fit well into its strategy to be an enterprise Linux vendor.  Right from the introduction of Mugshot, there appeared to be confusion regarding why RedHat was pursuing this product.

Mugshot champions gone?

It also appears that a few of the Mugshot champions from within RedHat such as Christopher Blizzard who has moved on to the Mozilla Foundation and Havoc Pennington who is currently at litl.

In a March blog post, Havoc even mentions the validity of the concept despite the lack of success with Mugshot:

It’s gratifying that the new default home screen of Facebook looks a lot like Mugshot.org, a site some of us came up with at Red Hat. We coded Mugshot’s personal-lifestream-thingy before Facebook’s news feed came out and before FriendFeed came out. Not saying either site copied us, but it’s still nice to know at least our idea was good (even though there were lots of reasons we weren’t the ones to get anywhere with it).

What’s next for Mugshot?

As of today, the source code for Mugshot is still available at http://svn.mugshot.org/ and it appears that a fork of the Mugshot code will live on in project magnetism at: http://code.google.com/p/magnetism/.  There is no indication of that a free shared Mugshot type service (like RedHat was offering) will be made available. 

The release of Fedora 11 was recently pushed back by a week and then another week to June 9th due to some blocker bugs still being open.  The new release date however is still just around the corner so I’ve decided to look at what is coming in Fedora 11.

What’s New in Fedora 11

• Gnome 2.26
• Firefox 3.5 (currently at beta 4) which introduces HTML5 <video> and <audio> tags an a Private Browsing Mode (aka Porn Browsing Mode)
• ext4 is now the default filesystem when installing a new Fedora 11 install
• Improved fingerprint reader experience with a improved detection and a GUI configuration tool (authconfig)
• gcc 4.4
• faster boot up times with the goal being a 20 second startup
• upgraded rpm to 4.7 for performance improvements
• OpenChange introduce for native Microsoft Exchange integration
• Xserver 1.6 which brings with it improved performance, stability and RANDR 1.3 support
• improved graphical drivers including

• kernel modeseting in Intel drivers for graphical bootup sequence
• new default NVidia drivers (nouveau) which supports more cards, has performance improvements over the current nv drivers and supports RANDR 1.2
• improved ATI/AMD Radeon drivers allowing r100/r200 based cards to work with modesetting and DRI2

Try it out

I decided to install a Fedora 11 Preview copy in a VMWare Workstation virtual machine to see first hand what changes were in store.  After booting off of the Live CD and clicking on Install to Hard Drive, the install process went very smoothly.  Installation seems faster than previous versions as well though I did select more packages on my previous Fedora 10 install.
Here is a screenshot of F11 in action:

Screenshot of Fedora 11

More info and reviews

For additional information there are podcasts including an interview with Fedora’s release manager Jesse Keating and Spot Callaway discussing the upcoming Fedora 11 features available at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F11_release_podcasts.  Another interview with Richard Hughes on the improvements to PackageKit are available at : http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1637

If you would rather see than hear about Fedora 11, there is also a screenshot tour of Fedora 11 available at: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Screenshot_Tour.

Not content to have the dominant position in the data center virtualization market with its VMware Infrastructure products including the widely used ESX, VMWare strikes out on another platform : mobile devices.

Virtualizing mobile devices

VMware MVP(Mobile Virtualization Platform) is a  product which allow mobile operating systems to be virtualized.  A small piece of code (about 20k) is run on a mobile device which effectively virtualizes the resources of the device allowing other operating systems to run on the virtualized hardware.

As Ars Technica describes, VMWare demoed a Nokia N800 running Google’s Android as well as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS.  Although there is some obvious overhead and performance penalties to virtualizing hardware on a mobile device (as on a server or desktop), freeing your mobile device to run the OS of your choice could prove quite valuable.

Currently VMware supports Windows CE 5.0 and 6.0, Linux 2.6.x (which would include Maemo and Android), Symbian 9.x, eCos, µITRON NORTi and µC/OS-II.  It does not appear to be available for sale yet but you can contact VMware to get more information on MVP.

The future?

Although it is fairly new and probably rough around the edges, perhaps VMware MVP will get rolled into VMware Workstation 7.0 which would allow developers to easily access multiple mobile platforms for ease of development and testing.

Now if they could only emulate the iPhone and Blackberry using MVP.  Then you would truly be able to use the hardware and software combination that suits YOU best.

Has the Sun set on MySQL?

Has the sun set on MySQL?  I don’t think so. Even after the buyout from Oracle, Sun’s MySQL is still looking up. With a new release coming down the pipes, there is little reason to shy away from MySQL.

After a controversial release of version 5.1 in December 2008, Sun’s (and soon to be Oracle’s) MySQLdatabase is quickly coming back with a preview version of MySQL 5.4.  Part of the reason for the rapid successive releases is the shift to a new release schedule based on time instead of the previous feature based releases.  Because of this shift, 5.4 won’t include any major new features such as the Falcon transactional storage engine but a more incremental set of features.

Sun making its mark

This is probably the first release in which we will see Sun’s influence over the databases’ evolution.  Sun is interested in making their hardware (and OS) platform more appealing to run MySQL on and so emphasis on better support for Sun’s hardware and Solaris in particular should come through in 5.4 and future releases.

The major enhancements between 5.1 and 5.4 are scalability improvements.  This new version adds the ability to address more than 4 CPU’s or cores (at least for the InnoDB engine).  This allows MySQL to scale up much better on larger servers such as 16 way x86 boxes and up to 64 way on Sun’s new CMT servers.

There are other scalability improvements including the inclusion of Google’s SMP and IO patches, a new thread concurrency algorithm and more efficient read-write lock mechanism.

Optimizing queries

Subquery optimizations and improvements in how joins are performed have provide dramatic improvements in execution times for certain queries.  A specific OSDL DBT-3 query was changed from a 12 minutes query requiring 9 million reads to a 1.8 second query with 153,000 reads.  Obviously this is probably an extreme example but many subqueries will be sped up due to these changes.

Other changes which clearly show Sun’s influence on MySQL include the inclusion of DTrace probes on Solaris, porting of Google’s SMP patches to Solaris and “operating system specific optimisations”

So how does it perform?

Overall performance according to benchmark looks quite a bit improved including a 59% improvement in EAStress2004 benchmark and generally improved read only and read write benchmarks on both Linux and Solaris.

One of the nice things about 5.4 is that most of the improvements and enhancements don’t require and database changes or altered configurations.

Looking forward to final release

For the last few weeks, people in Fredericton and along the Saint John river valley have been anxiously watching the water levels in the river to watch if the river will flood as in 2008.

After a near record snowfall in the winter of 2008-2009, warm and wet weather early in April quickly rose the river levels.  After rising to the flood level of 6.5 m in Fredericton around April 8th, cooler and drier weather allowed the snow melt to slow down.  This allowed the river level to drop more than two meters to 4.35 m, providing people living near the flood zone some breathing room.

And the Saint John River rises

Due to a lot of rain and warmer weather over the last week or so, the river is back on the rise.  New Brunswick’s Riverwatch is now forecasting a rise past the flood stage on Friday morning and rising to 7.0 m on Saturday morning.  Although the weather forecast is calling for dry weather for the next few days, the temperature is also forecasted to rise to over 20 degrees which will increase the rate of melting for the remaining snow that is left on the ground.

Even with the river rising over the official flood level of 6.5 m, at 7.0 m damage to low lying areas should be fairly minimal although I would imagine that a few basements will be flooded.  The river would have to rise over another meter in order to attain last year’s high water mark of 8.35 m ( Map – PDF ) at which point there was extensive damage to many building along the waterfront.

Additional resources:

• Environment Canada’s real time hydrometric data shows present and past river levels through New Brunswick and the rest of Canada
• The city of Fredericton has a Riverwatch site with information including maps of previous flood levels and flood prone areas of the city
• The province of New Brunswick’s Riverwatch site has detailed river level forecasts as well as additional planning and emergency information
• The city of Fredericton has a few webcams which can give you a view of the current river levels

Fredericton Flood Watch 2009

As the snow begins to melt in the Great White North, thanks to the great Fredericton flood of 2008, one question that has been on people’s minds here in New Brunswick is whether or not there will be extensive flooding on the Saint John River again this year. The images of the floods and fear of possible flooding in Fargo, North Dakota and in the Red River valley in Manitoba remind us of what we experienced in Fredericton, Woodstock, Edmunston and all along the Saint John river a short year ago.

From Sean McGrath's Flickr stream

Just like 2008?

Thanks to the NOAA website, we can examine the current snow depth and snow water equivalent for the western portion of the Saint John watershed.  We can also compare the amount to last year’s record amounts as a benchmark.  Luckily it appears that the snow depth and water content is less than last year even though they are both above normal in most areas.

NOHRSC Interactive Snow Information.

Unknown factors

There are still several additional factors which could affect  the possibilities of flooding this spring.  Rainfall and the quickness of the snow melt can have significant impacts on the water levels in the river.  Last year’s floods were caused in part by a large storm which dropped over 100 mm of rain in the upper Saint John river valley in northern NB, Maine and eastern Quebec just as the snow melting was taking place.  Another large storm of similar magnitude or a quick warming trend could quickly increase the river’s water levels and make all previous predictions useless.

And the rain falls

The last weekend (April 4-5) brought some heavy rains over New Brunswick and the weather forecast for the rest of the week is calling for more rain which does not bode well for keeping the river under flood levels.

Due to the recent rain and warm weather, there is already some flooding being caused by ice jams in the upper Saint John river valley near Hartland. Tributaries such as the Nashwaak and Oromocto river are also nearing flood levels. The water level in the Saint John river at Fredericton has also risen dramatically in the last few days going from 2.5 m to a current reading of near 5 m with a forecasted rise to 5.8 m by Wednesday. Flood stage is defined as 6.5 m while the high water level during last year’s major flood was 8.36 meters.

Hopefully the river will crest near flood levels and spare people living along the river a lot of grief.

About a week ago, I finished reading a book that has long been on my reading list: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond.

After being very impressed when I read his Pulitzer prize winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, I was eager to read Diamond’s take on civilization collapse and the reasons behind their failures.  Here is my review of it.

Stories of Collapse

The book examines several fallen civilizations such as Easter Island in the South Pacific, the Anasazi in which is now the southwestern United States, the Maya civilization in Central America.  There is also a deeper examination of the Vikings and in particular Greenland which was settled in 900 AD until approximately 1400 AD.

Each civilization and culture is examined and emphasis is placed on environmental factors that contributed to their weakening and collapse.  Deforestation, soil erosion, overfishing/overhunting and population growth are recurring activities which influence the ability of a society to support itself.  For example, the deforestation that occurred on Easter Island severely limited the ability of the people there to use fishing to support themselves.

As in Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond uses multiple fields such as archaeology, anthropology biology and geography to provide evidence to his claim that the environment played a pivotal role in the downfall of these cultures.

Diamond examines a few situations in which a society collapsed while another with similar issues made different choices and managed to avoid a collapse.  This case occurs today with the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic which share an island.  Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere has recently had many struggles in comparison to its relatively well off island neighbour.  The author argues that history and societal choices helped determine the diverging destinies of the two neighbours.

Another case which is examined is the Norse civilization in Greenland which became extinct while the culture of the Inuit in the same region experienced the same environmental conditions and due to their lifestyles and choices, survived.

Collapse is all around

Collapse is not only a study of ancient civilizations but also a reflection of issues which the world is currently facing.  A few case studies of recent or ongoing “collapses” remind the reader that we as a society are still vulnerable to possible collapse if we as a society are not careful.  The cases examined include the recent genocide in Rwanda, Haiti and possible collapses in the making in China and Australia.

Though I was not completely convinced by the case studies of Australian and Chinese collapse, the author does point out some major issues with environmental degradation (drought, erosion,  that are having impacts on Australian and Chinese societies but I’m not sure about the severity or the eventual denouement of these situations.

Not all doom and gloom

Collapse is not all doom and gloom.  In addition to examining societies that have collapsed, Jared Diamond also examines a few societies in which responses to crises lead to a sustainable society.  Japan for example ran into issues due to deforestation and population pressures in the 1600s.  Using a combination of population growth controls and effective timber management (along with imports from other countries), Japan managed to keep collapse at bay and in fact thrived due its choices.

What are we to do?

Collapse ends on the positive notes of hope with Diamond suggesting that if societies value the environment and make wise choices based not only on short term results and profits that we can thrive as a society and avoid collapse.  Perhaps it is too late as some ( http://postcarbon.org/shape_recovery ) are speculating that this economic recession that has just started might be a sign of our current civilization hitting a wall.

Should I read it?

I quite enjoyed reading Collapse:How Societies choose to Fail or Succeed quite a bit.  The book did feel a little environmentally preachy at times but overall it was a good examination of societies, some of the environmental challenges they face and how their response to those challenges dictate whether the societies will collapse or thrive.  A great read for the environmentalist in you but even if you aren’t a green to the bone type, the book could still appeal to you with its great examinations of past societies, how they lived and how they failed or succeeded in the face of challenge.

The Forward Music Group is a independent music label and management company based in my city of Fredericton, New Brunswick.  They represent a variety of musical acts and bands from the East Coast of Canada including Grand Theft Bus, Olympic Symphonium, Share and Sleepless Nights.  In fact they were recently nominated for Label of the Year at the 2009 ECMA awards.

Two sampler albums for the price of one!

Recently, as I was going to buy a Grand Theft Bus CD, I noticed that they have two sampler CDs available for FREE DOWNLOAD.  One sampler CD is called the Christmas sampler which contains previously unreleased tracks and some live material from various bands that Forward Music Group represents.  The other sampler is simply called the “Forward Music Group Sampler” and contains some really good tunes especially for a FREE download.  My favourite is Private Wars from Grand Theft Bus.  Great tune.

Share – Ukelele Tragic

There is also another CD available for free download from the same site from the band Share.  The album is called Ukelele Tragic.  I do like the two Share songs that are on the sampler so I’ll have to download Ukelele Tragic and give it a listen.

Support the Artists

Give the albums a listen and if you like what you hear, support the artists by buying their full CDs or going to see one of their shows.

I’m interested to hear any feedback on Forward Music and their artists.

Previous entry on Forward Music Group : http://danny.damours.net/wordpress/index.php/archive/forward-music-group

It appears that the effects of the recession are starting to show in the habits of computer buyers.

• HP has missed its revenue targets by $3 billion (but hits profit targets).
• Apple sales have gone from 50% year over year increases to – 6%

I guess after laying off a lot of staff, companies have a bunch of spare hardware laying around so that they don’t need to buy any more desktops and laptops.  Meanwhile the unemployed Joe Six Pack no longer has the money to buy Jobs’ latest flashy MacBook or a cheap new Windows desktop.

I have a feeling that this recession won’t be as short as they were previously predicting.

Recently Google has added magazines to its Book Search service.  The entire release from Google can be found at Google’s Official Blog.

The magazines in Book Search are indexed in their entirety and appear to be completely available in their original form with advertisements and all. Access is via a reader “application” which displays the pages as well as allow zooming and navigation.

What Magazines are available?

Although I haven’t yet found a complete list of magazines which are being indexed, some of the more interesting ones that I’ve come across are Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, New York, CIO and Men’s Health.  The list if magazines appear to small but hopefully Google is hard at work collecting, scanning and indexing other archives of magazines and hopefully these indexed archives will be made freely available to the public soon.

Screenshot of browsing June 1970 issue of Popular Science

History at your fingertips

One of the most interesting things about Google’s indexing of magazines is that the entire history of the magazine is available so it is possible for example to browse a 1872 issue of Popular Science or you can read about the future of airships (Zeppelins that is) and the opening of the Windsor-Detroit Ambassador bridge with the world’s longest suspension bridge span in the February 1930 issue of Popular Mechanics.

A valuable learning resource

This newly available and indexed resource could become a very valuable tool for research and education purposes.  The value in letting student examine past writings in a historical context is immense.  To see issues of the day being discussed can give a great historical context and perspective.

Looking to develop applications for Android but don’t want to get a contract with T-Mobile or like me, can’t sign up with T-Mobile due to geographical constraints  in order to get an HTC G1 Android phone to develop with?

Google’s Android Dev Phone 1

The Android Dev Phone 1 from Google is essentially an HTC G1 which is SIM unlocked and hardware-unlocked.  At $399 USD, the Dev phone is more expensive than what you would pay to get a G1 from T-Mobile but without a contract and restricted hardware and software, the Dev Phone should appeal quite a bit to developers interested in developing for Android.

The bootloader that come with the Dev Phone is unrestricted and in addition, the bootloader does not enforce the requirement for signed system images as does the T-Mobile G1 smartphone.  This open bootloader open the possibility of customizing the Android framework itself or perhaps even booting into a different OS on an Android based device.

Available around the world

One of the largest limitations of the T-Mobile’s HTC G1 exclusivity was that interested consumers and developers couldn’t get their hands on Android based phones unless they were located in the United States.  With the Android Dev Phone, Google is making the phone available to 18 countries including the US, Canada, UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, India and Japan.

In order to order the phone, one must be registered with the Android Marketplace for a one-time fee of $25.

The eighth annual Silver Wave Film Festival is taking place in Fredericton, New Brunswick this week from Thursday November 13th until Sunday November 16th.  Screenings will take place at Tilley Hall on the UNB campus, the Charlotte Street Arts Centre and the Centre communautaire Sainte Anne.

Not the Toronto International Film Festival

Although it is a smaller film festival with 82 films being screened compared to the 312 film week-long extravaganza called the Toronto International Film Festival, the Silver Wave Film Festival is big enough to bring in directors, producers and other film industry professionals to town for the weekend to give presentations and workshops for budding film enthusiasts.

Local and International

Part of the goal of the Silver Wave Film Festival is provide a venue to showcase local films and talent. As usual, this year’s line-up features a large number of local and regional films with almost half of the screenings being from New Brunswick.  However, there is also international flavour to the festival with several international films being screened including feature films from the UK, Mexico and the United States along with shorts and documentaries from other countries such as Germany.

One of the stand out events for me include the opening gala screening of the Moncton, New Brunswick shot Growing Op (trailer)which has received rave reviews.  Another interesting showing will be Gruff and Ready: The Mazzuca Story which profiles the locally famous Mazzuca brothers.  There are several other interesting shorts and features being screened throughout the weekend that I hope to catch.

Bigger and Better

It looks like an exciting festival line-up and it seems to keep getting better every year.  It really is nice to have an opportunity to see something other than the multi-million dollar budget predictable ho-hum Hollywood movies.  Looking forward to 2009’s Silver Wave line-up.

For quite a while now, it has been possible to use Google’s geocoding service which allows developers using the service to obtain a latitude / longitude pair for a given address.  This service is quite useful when searching for specific locations such as stores, houses or other points of interest.

Enter reverse geocoding

Up until now, however there hasn’t been an easy way to determine what the address was for a particular point on a map.  Google has recently unveiled a reverse geocoding service.

The GClientGeocoder.getLocations method can now take a GLatLng as a query parameter in which case it will perform a reverse geocoding and if possible return the address for the given location.

It will be interesting what kind of applications pop up which use the reverse geocoding functionality.

Video conferencing took another step with the first use of a virtual presence or “holographic” reporter on Election night on CNN.

Pulling off Virtual presence

The remote reporter, Jessica Yellin, was in Chicago’s Grant Park covering the scene as supporters waited for Barack Obama’s victory speech.  After stepping into a specially engineered booth or “tent” Jessica’s “presence” was apparently beamed to CNN’s New York studio for a one on one chat with Wolf Blitzer.

The special booth was apparently equiped with 44 cameras which were shooting the remote reporter from all angles (notably her feet seemed to be clipped out).  It appears that the stream of video images were then recomposed into a 3D model of the reporter which was then projected as a three-dimensional hologram in real time to studio in New York studio.

Bringing it home

I’m not sure what the perspective and experience was from either reporter’s perspective but as a viewer it came off as pretty convincing.  Now I guess we’ll need to upgrade out new HD video conferencing unit to holographic conferencing devices.  Can’t wait to see the budget for that upgrade.

More info at: USA Today

Some details are beginning to emerge about the next major release of Nokia’s Maemo platform, Maemo 5, which is being codenamed Fremantle.  Although nothing is guaranteed until the bits ship, there appears to some fairly major new features coming with this release.

Among the new features

• HSPA / 3G support which will allow users to be always connected even when out of Wi-Fi range
• OpenGL ES which is a fairly powerful subset of the full OpenGL specification which has been designed explicitly for embedded systems
• OMAP3 support in order to take advantage of Texas Instruments’ latest processor designs and capabilities.
• Hi Definition Camera support
• A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) and AVRCP (Audio/Video Remote Control Profile) for an improved Bluetooth interactions
• Adoption of recent Linux technologies such as Upstart, gUPnP, PulseAudio and OHM management deamon

In addition to a high level feature list, there is also a list of planned packages for the alpha version of Maemo 5 – Fremantle.

New Maemo, new tablets?

Judging from the feature list, it does appear that a new model of Nokia Internet tablets will be released in conjunction with Maemo 5 (Nokia N900 perhaps?).

Judging from the OMAP3 support to be included in Maemo 5, it is likely that the new N series tablet will include a new TI OMAP3 processor.  Judging by Texas Instruments’ site, the new OMAP3 line should offer some significant improvements in power and capabilities.  The OMAP3440 at the higher end of the processor line, embeds an Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR SGX graphics core which supports OpenGL ES 2.0 in hardware.  The OMAP3440 also includes an IVA 2+ accelerator which enables MPEG4, WMV9, RealVideo, H262 and H264 encode and decode at 720 x 480 at 30 frames per second.  The OMAP can also support XGA (1024 x 768) resolution at  24 bits of colour (16M colours).

Added to a new processor, the new tablets will likely have a high resolution camera, improved Bluetooth (A2DP and AVRCP) and 3G support.  I haven’t any other clues however to what other hardware changes might be coming down the line in the new tablet.

What is available?

Google has released the entire codebase for the Android SDK as the Android Open Source Project.  From the bootloader (a minimal reference version unfortunately) and runtimes to the end user applications such as email, calendar and the voice dialer are available for download and use.

Unfortunately there is still only one hardware device capable of running Android but the HTC G1 (currently only available from T-Mobile) has demonstrated some of the capabilities and some of the promise of the Android platform.

Not completely open

The bootloader will most likely be customized for various phone providers.  Some of the code will also be stored on the device ROM and will not be reprogrammable without reprogramming the ROM with some kind of jailbreak.  Some argue that because of this, some argue that Android is not truly open source.  The underlying code is available and open source and I would argue that this is a huge step in the right direction when compared to previously closed mobile platforms.

Silicon Alley Insider has a interesting post entitled “Does New York City Need More VCs?.”  In it they compared the venture capital situation in New York and in Silicon Valley.  New York appears to have much fewer and less visible VC investors in the technology markets.  In addition the article laments that the venture capital funds in New York are much more closed and less active in building a community and technology cluster.  For example in Silicon Valley, investment groups, angel investors and venture capitalists are present at start-up events and seem to have a more open door policy.  The resulting technology community draws in companies, investors and business founders and other technical staff from elsewhere around the world thanks to the ease with which start-ups can get access to investors.

Does Atlantic Canada need more VCs?

Broadening the argument of the need for more and more active VCs in New York, I would argue that Atlantic Canada could also use a good dose of investment companies.  Now I would not be able to argue that Atlantic Canada and especially New Brunswick as a province with a relatively small population and number of companies can support a large number of investment firms.  Certain government programs such as AIF and NBIF do have avenues for funding start-ups but in most cases, I think that any additional business support will be relatively generic and not be tuned in to a company’s particular business and their field.

There are a few funds with operations in Atlantic Canada but I don’t see any IT specific funds.  Could they really give me insight on bringing a dot.com or technology company and product to market?  Could they do much more than give cash?  I have no doubt that some of the funding companies could be a great resource to have onside but I would think that great Silicon Valley firms could also provide valuable industry advice based on previous experience with technology markets.

Not all IT is done in Silicon Valley

It is worth making the case though that venture capitalists and fund managers should not simply stick to their comfort areas in the big cities and known hotspots.  As many IT professionals can tell you, not all IT activities happen in Silicon Valley.  There are many great ideas and entrepreneurs out there across North America but some won’t be able to reach their potential due to lack of funding.

Maybe if you want to succeed in IT, you really do need to move to Silicon Valley.

I Hope not….

Two Fredericton IT firms have recently merged to create a powerful Atlantic Canadian provider of information technology and management services.  Accreon which has 65 employees is acquiring ISOMNI and its 25 employees for an undisclosed sum.  With this acquisition, Accreon becomes of the largest independent IT services companies in Atlantic Canada.

Accreon, itself created out of a merger of three small companies, Evention Technologies Inc., AdvansysTMC and Redcliffe Group has also recently been named placed in the respectable position of 229 in the prestigious Branham 300 which is a listing of the top 250 Canadian IT companies (along with 25 multinationals and 25 “up and commers”).  Accreon joins other New Brunswick IT companies CARIS at 143, Mariner Partners at 206 in the listing.

I am hoping to see some good growth out of Accreon.  Hopefully the acquisition of ISOMNI will give them the expertise and the size to land some larger clients and contract in the near future.

See also : Accreon grows with acquisition of ISOMNI from the Daily Gleaner

Mozilla developers have been working on building a version of Firefox specifically for mobile devices.  This involves not only fine tuning the Firefox web browser but adding new features and changing some of the default functionality in Firefox in order to make it more usable on mobile devices.

The problem with mobile devices

Mobile devices have been notoriously difficult to write to due to memory and CPU constraints as well as very limited displays.  Luckily some of the constraints are being relaxed as mobile devices become more powerful.  Devices such as Nokia’s N810, Apple’s iPhone and the OQO palmtop give developers access to rich displays and acceptable CPU and memory limitations in order to write fully functional software.

Why a whole new Firefox?

As evidenced by its popularity, Firefox works great as a browser on the desktop.  In fact it works on mobile devices as well as Nokia has taken the Mozilla engine and created the MicroB browser which is included on the N810 and OS2008.

There are some advantages to tailoring a mobile version of Firefox however.  For example, due to some of the mobile compromises with regards to CPU and memory, there some cases where optimization should be performed differently in a mobile context versus a desktop context.  In fact performance optimizations appear to be high on the list for Fennec.

Mobile browsing is also different in that a keyboard and mouse is not always the preferred (or even possible) interaction methods.  Activities that we often take for granted on a desktop such as cut and paste are not always easy or possible on mobile devices.  By providing alternative means to perform certain tasks that are difficult or cumbersome on mobile devices can greatly ease the burden of mobile browsing and enhance the experience greatly.

Mobile Firefox can also go beyond a port of desktop Firefox in order to take advantage of the characteristics of mobile devices.  Having integration with a devices phone capabilities or geolocation (GPS) capabilities could add interesting twists to browsing.  A user’s mobile device could also act as a master data repository for different desktop installs allowing someone to keep multiple desktop Firefox installs in synch.

Still pre-alpha

Fennec is still in pre-alpha stage with an alpha planned for September but in open source fashion, you can download and try milestone builds.
I downloaded Milestone 7 in order to try it out on my Nokia N810. The browser is definitely rougher around the edges than the built in N810 browser but I think that the developers have some good ideas and plans on how to take advantage of mobile browsing.

It will be interesting to see how Fennec develops in the future.

More info

For more info see:

Mozilla’s wiki page on Fennec
Mark Finkle » Fennec – M7
Fennec installation instructions

Are looking to listen to some new music or perhaps some of your old favourites?

Do you enjoy sharing your latest discovery with your buddies or perhaps reminisce over an “classic” tune?

Have you ever wondered if you were the only person in the world that still liked to listen to an obscure band like the Dead Milkmen?

Blip.fm just might be for you….

Be your own DJ on Blip.fm

Blip.fm allows you to search for songs and artists via a handy search box.  Once a song is chosen, a Flash based media player will play the chosen song for you and will allow you to “Blip” the song.  By blipping a song, a user must add a comment about the song (though some simply put a blank space).  Over time, the series of blips creates a music stream which is in effect a personalized playlist with a running commentary.

Blip.fm sources tracks from files stored in publicly accessible locations and indexed by sites such as Seeqpod and Skreemr and so the songs which you play are available to others to listen to the same songs as well.  Blip also has an upload function which allows you to upload songs which you would like to (and are legally allowed to) share.

Share and communicate

In Twitter fashion it is possible to follow other users and see their running tracklist as well as let others view your songlist.  You can also reply to users entries by using the @username convention that Twitter uses.  In this fashion, you can have ongoing conversations, suggest new songs or just let somebody know how much you like (or perhaps dislike) their choices.

It is also possible to view the entire Blip.fm music stream which shows all the blips that users are currently listening to. This can make for interesting viewing as you can see a very wide variety of music being blipped. There are typically obscure artists and tracks and international music mixed in with the more mainstream choices blipped by users.

Buying the blips

Blip.fm makes it possible to buy the MP3 that are blipped through Amazon’s music store.  I assume that Blip gets a referral fee from Amazon when purchases are made.  Unlike the Squidoo business model, the “DJs” blipping the songs and in effect generating the blip.fm content, don’t get any compensation but the ability to discover and listen to new and old music is most likely reward enough to keep users coming back to the site.

Be your own DJ

Give it a shot and check out my playlist at http://blip.fm/ddamours.  Warning: it is addictive.

You’ll probably be listening to songs that you haven’t heard or thought of in ages as well as discover some new songs that are bound to become your future “classics”.

Have fun!

Shortly after the release of Eclipse 3.4, Instantiations released version 6.7.0 of their Eclipse based Java GUI design toolset WindowBuilder Pro.  Version 6.7.0 includes the following components:

• Swing Designer 6.7
• SWT Designer 6.7
• GWT Designer 5.0 (despite the release notes claiming it contains 4.0.0)

New features

The most important feature of this release is that WindowBuilder Pro 6.7 now fully supports Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede).  This is critical in order to allow users to upgrade to the latest and greatest Eclipse version and be able to take advantage of the features that Ganymede brings.

One of the nice new features (at least for certain users) is that WindowBuilder Pro has been validated for IBM Rational Software.  This means that if you are a user of Rational Application Developer (RAD) that you should now be able to install and use Instantiations without any issues.  Although I don’t use RAD myself I can imagine that there are some developers who are glad to see this.

SWT Designer

Speaking of taking advantage of new Eclipse 3.4 features, the SWT Designer now has support for the new 3.4 data binding APIs such as the TreeViewer input bindings as well as improved support for existing bindings.

Swing Designer

The Swing Designer portion of WindowBuilder hasn’t received too many updates in version 6.7 but there are couple of notable improvements.  JGoodies FormLayout (version 1.2.0) is now supported. Apparently, JFileChooser support has been added as well though I can’t find any reference beyond the release notes and I don’t see any apparent support in my installation.  Perhaps I’m missing something.

GWT Designer

The GWT Designer included in this release has made great improvements over previous versions.  Support for MyGWT and GWT-Ext has been improved with a palette now available for GWT-Ext now included.  GWT Designer also now supports Firefox 3 under Linux and Safari 3.1 under OSX.

In addition to these GWT Designer enhancements, there is a version 5.1 of GWT Designer is currently in beta with quite a few new features including full support for the upcoming GWT 1.5 release.

My Take

As I’ve stated previously, WindowBuilder is the best tool out there for building Java, SWT or GWT GUIs.  Pre-existing GUI code can be modified by the tool and there is no additional untouchable sections created by the tool like other GUI programs.  This latest version improves support and has fixed some nagging bugs and so far appears to be a more refined and robust tool.  Good job Instantiations!

I’m disappointed that version 6.7 did not include any of the Swing Beans Binding (JSR-295)  or improved Swing Application Framework (JSR-296) support but it appears that support will be coming in future versions.  Then again Sun has been VERY QUIET on these two specifications.  Hopefully they won’t be dead in the water.

Additional Details

Additional details concerning new features can be found at: Window Builder Documentation : New & Noteworthy – v6.7.0.

Trial version downloads of WindowBuilder can be found at: http://www.instantiations.com/windowbuilder/pro/download.html?id=1

Upgrading to Diablo

Although it has been out for a while, I just recently had the opportunity to update to the latest OS 2008 (4.2008.23-14) which is based on maemo 4.1 codenamed Diablo.

No more flash upgrades thanks to SSU

Maemo 4.1 introduces a new feature called Seamless Software Update (SSU) which drastically changes how operating system updates will be performed in the future.  Previously when a new update was released, the N810 needed to re-flashed with the updated OS version.  This effectively completely wiped out the contents of the device and it was necessary for users to restore or reinstall previously installed applications.

Once maemo 4.1 is flashed onto an N810, SSU allows in place OS updates without having to re-flash.  Users also get a notification of possible updates on their home screen as well as in the application manager.  This is in contrast to previously where tablet users had to navigate through Nokia’s site to find OS updates.

By having this new update capability on the mobile devices, Nokia intends to release smaller, more focused updates on a more regular basis.  For example instead of waiting for major updates to several components in order to have a full OS release, it will be possible to Nokia to push a new browser update independently from other updates.  In fact, on August 11th, Nokia did just that and released the first SSU update which included updates for the web browser and the email client.

Other OS2008 updates

In addition to SSU, the latest OS 2008 update also includes a new email client based on the open source Modest and tinymail project.  Although not fully featured as something as large as evolution, Modest appears to be a decent email client.  It has support for multiple accounts and built in support for some webmail sites.  Modest is also designed to be a compact and fast mail client even reportedly being faster than Gmail’s web interface.  I’ll have to dig in a bit deeper and use Modest a lot more before making any judgements on it.

Update your tablet’s OS

For instructions on updating your internet tablet see: http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware

Do you think that data on your computer or laptop is private?  Think again; especially if you travel to or from the United States.

The Power of Big Brother Homeland Security

Big Brother a.k.a. the US Department of Homeland Security has deemed that if you are crossing the border, they can pretty much do whatever they wish with your electronic equipment and any data that you might have on it.

According to the washingtonpost.com, the Dept. or Homeland Security’s search policy allows laptops or other electronic devices to be brought to an “off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing”.  The search policies also specify that copies of the device’s content may be shared with other agencies and private entities for translation, decryption or “other reasons”.

Now I’m not generally a paranoid person but the policies appear to give security agents some pretty big freedoms which could be ripe for abuse.  Any person “without suspicion of wrongdoing” along with “private entities” for “other reasons” scare me.

Examples of abuse

For example, an executive of a company which is developing a revolutionary technology has his laptop seized at the border.  The contents of the laptop are found to contain information related to a new product or process which could threaten a large American company.  Under the search policies, it appears possible that border officials could share the data with the large American company (“a private entitity”) for assesment of the damage that this new product could have on the company (“other reasons”).

For example, the next time you enter the US with your laptop the border agent could seize and copy all of your photos, web browsing history (including any saved passwords), downloads, documents, financial and banking information and any logs of your activities.  Now this may or may not contain information that you deem to be sensitive but I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable letting strangers having full access to my data with seemingly little oversight.  Who knows perhaps they will send all of your email and IM conversations between yourself and your mistress to your wife back at home.  After all that is a “private entity” and the information would be sent for “other reasons”.

How can you safeguard your data?

Besides the obvious tactic of avoid travel to or from the United States or not bringing any electronic accessories along with you through customs, there are other measures which one can take to protect the privacy of your data.

Encryption

Encrypting your data is an option which can provide some security for your data.  Many programs such as PGP, FileVault and TrueCrypt allow users to encrypt files or even whole hard drives which makes it very difficult for people to access data without the proper passwords.  Disc encryption however is not completely safe.  It is also true that officials might be able to force you to reveal your password although this is currently being challenged in court by Sebastien Boucher.

Travelling with “Blank devices”

In fact, the Toronto law firm Blaney McMurtry has a policy which requires all of its lawyers to travel with blank laptops.  This is in response to concerns that border officials could confiscate their laptops and gain access to sensitive legal and client documents.  They are also creating policies which would protect the data on their Blackberries as well.

CNet also has a useful guide to customs proofing your laptop.

UPDATE: It appears that some US lawmakers are considering imposing some limitations on unjustified electronic searches.

Almost a month ahead of schedule (how often do you hear that in the software world!), WordPress 2.6 (codename Tyner) has been released.

Wordpress 2.6 New Features

Some of the new features include:

• Tracking and diffs of previous edits of posts which allows authors to get full histories of posts and pages.  This could be really handy when multiple authors collaborate on posts.
• Updated and improved Press It bookmarklets which had been unfortunately removed entirely from WordPress 2.5.  In addition to providing an easy to create a post about a web page at specific URL, the updated ‘Press It’ bookmarklet will allow extract photos from web pages and even embed scripts for some videos such as YouTube videos.
• Ability to perform a theme preview before activating a new theme on a blog
• Google Gears support Wordpress
• Security enhancements

Below is a video demonstrating the latest new features in WordPress 2.6.

Problems upgrading WordPress blogs to 2.6

When I upgraded my WordPress installs, I couldn’t log back into the blog.  After entering my username and password, I received the message: “Please log in again.“.  I ended up having to delete my blog’s cookies in my browser.  This appears to be due to the fact that WordPress 2.6 has changed how cookies are handled in order to make WP more secure.

Another issue which I encountered was that my permalinks were broken.  The home page would render fine but any of my posts would come up blank (though my sidebars still rendered properly).  Oddly, my other blog did not encounter this issue.  It turns out that Wordpress 2.6 has an issue with permalinks which include index.php in them.  For some odd reason back in the WP 2.2 timeframe, including index.php was the only way in which I could get permalinks to work which is why it index.php is in my permalink structure.  Suggested fix 2 which is ensuring that the category and tag base are not empty seems to be working for me.

Smooth sailing…

With these two problems resolved however, everything appears to have upgraded properly and WordPress 2.6 seems to be humming along nicely.

This week, Industry minister Jim Prentice introduced Bill C-61 which contains amendments to Canada’s Copyright Act with the intention of updating the current law to take into account the widespread adoption and use of new digital media such as iPods and and other portable digital media devices.

Format shifting to be made legal

One of the major headline grabbing items in the bill is the explicit permission to allow transfer of content (at least some content) to multiple devices such as portable music and video players or computers.  This amendment would legalize transferring the contents of a CD to your MP3 player or to your computer.  There are some restrictions such as only one copy per device is allowed, that no DRM was disabled or circumvented in the process.

It is interesting to note that the clauses permitting format shifting include, music or “a work or other subject-matter that is a photograph or is contained in a book, newspaper, periodical or videocassette”.  There is no mention of other formats such as DVDs nor other types of content such as online video or online photographs which if I understand correctly means that format shifting would remain illegal for these cases.

Legality of time shifting

Another reason for the “modernization” of Canada’s Copyright Act is to clarify the legality of time shifting which is the practice of recording a program in order to watch it at the user’s convenience.  In the U.S., time shifting has explicitly been legal since 1984 when the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Sony vs. Universal case was handed down.  In Canada, there is currently no mention in the Copyright act regarding the legality of time shifting.  Since users are effectively copying programs when using their VCR, computer or DVR, they are in violation of the Copyright Act.

If passed in its current form, Bill C-61 would explicitly allow time shifting which is great for consumers.  There are however several caveats with this new allowance.  It is not legal to keep recorded copies “longer than necessary in order to listen to or watch the program at a more convenient time”.  It would be illegal then to keep recorded copies of your favourite shows.  What the legal status of people’s existing collection of programs would be remains unclear.  This also means that if you want to have a copy of a show long term, you would be forced to buy it on DVD or online even if you recorded every episode on your VCR or DVR.  As I will discuss below, there are also DRM issues which could impact the use of time shifting.

Canada’s version of the DMCA

Although the amendments specifically allow consumers to copy legally obtained media onto various media devices for personal use, there are a lot of strings and conditions which have led many to label this Bill as Canada’s DMCA – a reference to the widely criticized United States’ DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).  In fact Michael Geist, a law professor a the University of Ottawa has pointed out that the Bill C-61 digital lock provisions are even more restrictive than the US DMCA.

DRM – making criminals out of consumers

One of the proposed amendments specially prohibit the circumvention and disabling of any digital locks or digital rights management (DRM).  Since DRM is present on many CD, online downloads and almost all DVDs, it will effectively be illegal to make copies of these media onto portable players or for other purposes such as backups.  Today, it is quite common for people to copy or “rip” DVDs in order to have a backup copy as well as to enble the transfer of the content onto portable video devices.  Bill C-61 will now make this act illegal and designate a lot of people as criminals.

Making things even more confusing?

There still appears to be a fair bit of confusion over legalities of certain activities as well as the effect of Bill C-61 on people who currently have items which are currently legal but will no longer be legal if and when the Bill is adopted.

Will C-61 pass?

With the uproar regarding the introduction of this bill combined with the fact that federal conservatives are in a minority government means that this bill will probably not be passed without some modifications.  Hopefully the government will listen to the outcry and change some of the more onerous DMCA like clauses.

As many people inside and outside the academic community are aware, there is a steep decline in computer science enrollments in post-secondary institutions.  For many in the computer science field, including software companies such as Google, Sun and IBM this is a troubling trend.  If there are no CS students graduating, who will develop the next generation of software?  Is there anything that can be done in order to see this trend be reversed?

How to increase CS enrollments and interest

There are several approaches that can be taken to attempt to address the decline in computer science students.  Attempting to attract students to the field in high school and even elementary school is one approach.  By involving and interesting students early, it is possible to form a more positive image of what is involved in computer science and teach and show them why pursuing a degree in the field is worthwhile.

Other bloggers have also examined the issue of how interest high school students. Cay Horstman has a look at declining CS enrollments and suggests perhaps that we should look at enhancing high school courses or offering advanced placement (AP) courses to students. Sonya Barry suggests involving industry professionals to act as volunteers in order to support and enrich high school programs. She also examines the issue of how to target and teach high school students in Once we have a room full of kids, what should we teach them?.

Restructuring CS degrees

Another approach which might attract some more students to computer science is to modify how CS degrees and courses are currently structured.

There are several CS specializations or different CS related degrees that can be offered to students.  Some of the most common of these variations include software engineering, computer engineering and information systems.  Typically these specializations require a core set of CS courses along with several courses in the chosen area of the field.  By expanding these specialization options to areas such as HCI, bioinformatics or animation some students which were previously disinterested in a general core CS degree might become interested.

Some colleges and universities are taking this approach a step further and tailoring the core set of CS courses based on the wanted specialization.  Georgia Tech for example has introduced a threads approach in which students pick two out of eight threads to follow. These threads include options such as Computer Modeling, Computers and People and Computers and Media. The student’s prerequisite core CS courses will then be determined based on the threads selected by the student. In the words of Georgia Tech, this model eliminates the “one size fits all” CS curriculum.

Other universities are restructuring how they teach CS to ensure that courses concentrate on core CS fundamentals such as problem solving, data structures and algorithms as opposed to struggling to programming language syntax and other non fundamental issues.

Will the students come back?

There is no doubt that reversing declining computer science enrollments is a difficult task. There are several additional factors which are not directly under control such as macroeconomic factors such as the job market, the valuation and hence accompanying salaries and prospects of CS graduates.  Despite tons of efforts in recruitment and attractions, if there are no stable well paying jobs for graduates, except for the hardcore passionate computer geek, students will simply not enroll.  There are signs however that things might be turning around.

Google’s Android Developer Challenge

With the introduction of its Android mobile platform, Google announced the Android Developers Challenge which has $10 million in prizes for great mobile applications built for Android.

Phase 1 Round 1 winners

The first phase of the challenge which was just completed, resulted in 50 applications being shortlisted, the developers receiving $25000 and the chance to go on to the next round where up to $275000 will be up for grabs to the best applications.

It appears that Google has already received its money’s worth. Before even a single phone or handset is built, Google managed to get a nice little roster of applications created. The winning 50 applications are shown here (PDF – 4 MB). Although I can’t attest to the quality of the submissions, there appears to be some really interesting ideas in the list. Silicon Alley Insider narrowed it down to their favourite 5.

One application that I was impressed with was AndoidScan which can recognized bar codes from books, CDs or DVDs and will fetch reviews and perform a pricing comparison with a dozen online stores. If it works as advertised, it could end up being a really handy application. As expected, a few applications are mobile social applications and few deal with sharing routes or quickly sharing pictures and other data while on the go. All appear to have some potential.

Android vs. iPhone vs. Blackberry

Google is obviously trying to attack the chicken and egg problem of handsets and applications. By providing a lineup of useful apps, handset providers will be more likely to make the plunge and create new Android or Open Handset Alliance based handsets. Applications will also be the key battlefield in the competition between the Android platform and the iPhone and Blackberry. Google is hoping that by building a strong SDK and attracting developers to the relatively open platform that great applications will emerge which will raise the profile and popularity of Android.

Gotta love competition….