XP gets a reprieve

PC World – XP Reprieve: Microsoft Gives OEMs Five More Months

Microsoft had planned to stop selling XP through OEMs and retailers on Jan. 31, 2008, while custom system builders have until Jan. 31, 2009, to pre-install XP on machines. But because sales of Vista PCs have not been as strong as expected, OEMs and retailers have asked Microsoft to extend XP’s availability. OEMs and retailers will now have until June 30, 2008, to sell PCs with Vista preinstalled on machines, Microsoft said. Retailers also can sell XP out of the box until that time if they choose, the company said.

A couple of tools for transfering email to GMail

Neither of these tools are perfect for moving IMAP email to GMail, but they will work if nothing else is available.  If you have a  complex folder system for organizing your IMAP email, then either of these techniques are too labor intensive.

mozdev.org – mailredirect: index

The mailredirect extension for Mozilla Thunderbird (version 0.7 and above) and Mozilla Mail client adds ability to redirect one or more mails to one or more recipients.
Feature of mail redirecting is also known as bouncing.

Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader (GML) – Import Your Mail into GMail

Originally, the GMail Loader only worked with mBox format files (because it is all I needed) and was command line based. As others asked for similar functions, I began to expand it. Today, the GMail Loader is a graphical, cross-platform, Python based utility that supports two mBox formats (Netscape, Mozilla, Thunderbird, Most Other Clients), MailDir (Qmail, others), MMDF (Mutt), MH (NMH), and Babyl (Emacs RMAIL). Eventually, I plan to add support for direct sending of IMAP accounts, and am working on a library that can read and export Microsoft Outlook PST files. Until that time, try the ReadPST utility found on the “Other Utilities” page.

LinkedIn Faces Up to the Competition

So, should I use my usual profile shot?  Or do kilts fall outside the boundaries of business casual?

Picture this – LinkedIn adds profile photos

t’s taken four years for LinkedIn to add photos, when every other social network has done it forever. The site for business professionals has always kept a conservative, business-like tone. But although it says the decision has been driven by members, LinkedIn could not have escaped noticing that business people are using sites like Facebook to network both personally and for business. Adding photos ticks a box marked ‘we can be as friendly-looking as Facebook too guys’.

Google Reliability Numbers, Worldwide

In the US, Google was down 31 minutes a year.  How did your IT services department do by comparison?

Google: 99.999 Percent Reliable, in Brazil

Google’s Brazil site was down only three minutes in an entire year, giving it five 9s reliability. The U.S. search site was down ten times as much, giving it only 99.994 percent reliability. I think I can live with that.

CIO: Macs a better choice for the Enterprise?

Nice Summary of a CIO article regarding lower TCO and higher ROI of Macs in the Enterprise.

MacDailyNews – CIO: Apple’s Mac OS X is the most cost effective operating system

   Why Mac OS X is the best choice financially speaking:

• Macs bring a better overall value proposition

• Macintosh licensing fees are cheaper

• The Mac desktop spawns fewer calls to the help desk

• Mac users are more productive workers

• Macs last longer

• Mac OS X is more secure

• Mac is just as cost-effective as Windows to manage and administer

• Add Macs while hanging on to your investments in other OSes

What is Web 2.0 Good For?

Dilbert Comic Strip Archive – Dilbert.com – The Official Dilbert Website by Scott Adams – Dilbert, Dogbert and Coworkers!

More Details on Sun’s Project Indiana

So what has Sun got in mind for Project Indiana?  Its already made nice with Ubuntu.  And other people have already started on Solaris/Linux hybrids.  It sure looks like an attempt to recapture back-room data center business that left for RedHat.


[Phoronix] New Project Indiana Details Emerge

Among the advantages of Project Indiana is that it will use Sun’s ZFS as the default file-system, and Project Indiana will be taking full advantage of its abilities to create snapshots and perform rollbacks if something with the system’s software goes wrong. With Sun’s past work with the GNOME project, GNOME will be the desktop environment in Project Indiana said Ian Murdock. He had gone on to reiterate several other basic points such as the single CD installation with network-based package management (likely powered by apt). Project Indiana will also be easier to acquire, as it will be available through mirrors that do not need registration and will be distributed via Bit Torrent. Another goal of Ian’s is also to modernize the command line.

Google Social World

So it looks like Google won’t wait for Microsoft or Yahoo (or a merger of the two) to buy FaceBook .

It looks like Google’s up-till-now red-headed step kid Orkut
is going to take center stage as a nexus for all other social networks. 

At the center of the plan is Brad Fitzpatrick, formerly of Six Apart.

Google To “Out Open” Facebook On November 5

In the long run, Google seems to be planning to add a social layer on top of the entire suite of Google services, with Orkut as their initial main source of social graph information and, as I said above, possibly adding third party networks to the back end as well. Social networks would have little choice but to participate to get additional distribution and attention.

 …

Brad Fitzpatrick, the chief architect of Six Apart until he joined Google in August, is leading the charge to make the Google project as open as possible. Patrick Chanezon, Google Evangelist, is herding the cats.

Lots of people noticed Fitzpatrick’s social graph post (linked in paragraph above), connected the dots to his new job at Google, and speculated that Google’s has been working on something really, really big in this area. This is now confirmed and, unless Google changes the launch date, we’ll be seeing the beginning of it on November 5.

Microsoft thinks Facebook worth $10 Billion

The price just keeps going up…

Microsoft Is in Talks To Buy Facebook Stake – WSJ.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft Corp. is in talks with Facebook Inc. about making an investment in the social-networking startup that could value Facebook at $10 billion or more, according to people familiar with the matter.

Collaborative Web Site Design

Jumpchart » Home

If you build websites for a living, you know that content organization and approval can be an overwhelming process. We’ve all tried flowcharts, and wireframes, html mocks… even paper. All of these suffer from crucial flaws… They’re not interactive, and they carry no momentum into the build phase.