A life-support system for browsers

That is how John Naughton defines Google's new operating system:

[...] There wasn't much technical detail in the company's blog post, but the one thing that is clear is that the new OS will be - in its words - "a natural extension of Google Chrome". It is, they go on to say, "our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be".

If true, we have reached a significant milestone because what the Google guys propose amounts to turning the world upside down. Up to now, the operating system was at the heart of every computing device, transforming the machine from an expensive paperweight into something that could do useful things - running programs, managing displays, handling keyboard and mouse, etc. And because the OS had to be able to do all of this, it was the largest, most complex and most important piece of software of all.

In the old paradigm, the web browser was just another program the OS had to support. When the PC was the platform, that made perfect sense, but that paradigm has been steadily eroding. As broadband penetration increased, more and more people began to get their "computing" services not from their PC but from server farms over the net. Imperceptibly, we have been moving into a world in which, to repeat an old mantra, "the network is the computer".

If the network is indeed the computer, then the browser - our window on to the network - becomes the key piece of software. For many people today, the browser is the only program they really need. So it was only to be expected that somebody would eventually ask why we needed vast, clunky, expensive operating systems (such as Windows Vista, say) when really all that is required is a life-support system for a browser. That's what the Google engineers have asked. Their answer is that only a minimalist OS is now needed, and that is what they are developing - and what millions will be running in the latter part of 2010.

More here in today's Observer on this absolutely fascinating development.

Freemium/Freeconomics

An interesting post on the potential of the new economy:

[...] Free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid. But if you don't start with free on the Internet, most companies will never get paid.

Via Tim O'Reilly's Twitter feed. With more apposite remarks from the same source here.

High quality URLs versus writing space

The tension between brevity and discourse, between juxtaposition and expansion, was never more clearly expounded than here. A history of blogging which delineates its two-headed fundamentals with precision. Via John Naughton.

More on smartphones and open source ways of working

With greater freedoms, come ever-increasing dangers. Or so they would have us believe.

There's always supposed to be a downside to digital interconnectedness. As the new head of MI6 gets his Facebook profile cleaned out, a service perhaps the rest of us might wish to make use of one day as we pursue this virtual sharing without really knowing where it will all end, so the spammers attempt to make money out of Michael Jackson's sad demise.

Communication and propaganda stand either side of a highly blurred - and what's more, blurring - line.

Meanwhile, I'm still investigating the virtues of smartphones. One conclusion I've come to is that the future requires us to move towards a model where we may use different applications for related purposes - sometimes, even different applications for the same purpose. No one can ever provide a total answer to any problem. (Anyone who claims they can has already crossed that line I mentioned above.) This is the model of the competitive marketplace, the marketplace of evolutionary - and occasionally revolutionary - development. The age of integrated solutions, where one company decided what its customers needed and provided it within a timeframe it was almost always able to define, is over.

The principles of open source - its tools and ways of working - will inform software and product development in the future, even where its licensing systems may not.

How to install Easy Peasy on a bootable 8GB SDHC card

Well. It had me up till 3 o'clock in the morning, as these things are wont to do. But I got there in the end.

I have an Eee PC 900 which I wanted to use with Easy Peasy, a netbook version of Ubuntu. But I didn't want to touch the original Xandros installation. After much fumbling and surfing, I worked out how to do it. The solution is to install it to an 8GB SDHC card which you can then leave in the card slot and conveniently take around with you. It's also persistent, so files, settings and updates all work as one would expect with any standard install.

Here are the (currently) pertinent links. All I can say is this worked for me. I take no responsibility if it doesn't work for you!

1. Go to geteasypeasy.com and click on the download link
2. Download the iso file to your computer of choice
3. Follow the instructions to create a USB stick installation. The instructions you follow will depend on which computer you're using to create the USB stick in question. If it's Windows, you'll need to download this helper application (unetbootin). If it's any flavour of Linux, then you'll need to click here
4. Run the helper application with an empty USB stick plugged in. Install the iso to the USB stick
5. Once everything is installed on the USB stick, cancel the reboot on unetbootin, safely remove the USB stick and go to your Eee PC 900 (I assume it works with 701s - but I am awaiting feedback on this)
6. Make sure your Eee PC is switched off
   
7. Plug in the USB stick. Turn it on. At the first grey start-up screen, press the ESC key. Choose the USB stick to boot from. Wait a bit - it takes a little longer than the normal Xandros installation to boot up
8. If you haven't already, put your 8GB SDHC card (I used a Maxell Class 4 - I'm sure other cards by reputable manufacturers will however work) into a USB card reader. Do not put it into the card slot itself - if you do, you will probably not be able to install Easy Peasy to the card. Then plug the card reader into one of the other USB ports
   
9. On the Easy Peasy screen, go to the Administration tab and click on Install. Follow the instructions until you get to the page which asks you how to partition the hard drive. Choose the second Guided instructions radio button and then ensure you select the drive option which says something like "sdg" (in my case, it was the third in the list) - this will be the external card reader
10. Continue by following the instructions on the Install program. Ensure that the booter is installed to the same "sdg" (or equivalent) drive
11. The program may take between half an hour to forty minutes to copy the files from the USB stick to the SD card in the card reader. The Eee PC's own hard drives should only be accessed right at the end as grub looks for other operating systems. If the hard drive light lights up during installation, something is surely going wrong! But it may be too late to do anything about it ...
12. Once it's installed, you can quit the USB version of Easy Peasy, power down the Eee PC, remove the USB stick from the USB port, the card reader from the Eee PC and the SD card from the card reader. You can now put the SD card directly into the Eee PC's own card slot
13. Go through the same process to boot up as before - wait for the first grey start-up screen, click ESC, choose the SD card option to boot from and you'll now be booting up Easy Peasy from the card
14. You can now configure your wireless connection by inputting the passphrase or passkey by clicking on the network icon at the top right of the screen. Once configured, go to Update Manager and update your software. I haven't gone as far as updating Ubuntu itself but I was able to install all other 69 packages that required updating with no problem whatsoever

Yes. It runs a little slower than Xandros - but it's a safer way of migrating from one system to another and it can allow you to keep your options open. It worked for me anyhow.

I ran unetbootin under Windows Vista and installed Easy Peasy from the USB stick to the SDHC card via the card reader under a live version of Easy Peasy running on the Eee PC itself.

As always, the only caveat you should really keep in mind is to back up any important data before you try new installations of operating systems. If in doubt, back out!

Comments and rewrites of the above most welcome.

Mobile blogging

I've got a simple smartphone between my thumbs and I've just discovered the joys of mobile blogging. Over at smokedapplewood.blogspot.com I've just posted some photos and a video. The potential and technology involved is astonishing. This is true self-publishing by the end-user. All you need is mobile Internet and you can publish to you heart's content. Words and pictures and ebooks for free. I never realised smartphones could be so smart.

ISP boss on file-sharing and downloading

The Guardian provided us with this report on Friday:

Trying to stop people sharing copyrighted material over the internet is a game of cat and mouse in which the pirates will always win and calls for internet service providers to halt illegal file sharing are "naive", according to the boss of Carphone Warehouse.

Instead, Charles Dunstone said, the solution is education about the benefits of respecting copyright coupled with services that allow consumers "to get content easily and cheaply".

YouTube premiere of "Home" (closing date 14th June)

I've only just stumbled across this story, via El País today. You've got until June 14th to watch a major film, just premiered in the cinemas. I imagine this is a first - but it's clearly the future of feature film distribution.

The film is called "Home". History is being made. More from YouTube - but only until the 14th - here.

When not all Twitter worms are bad news (or how to review a book in 140 characters)

140 characters is all it takes these days to get people scurrying to buy a book. You do of course need visibility - you need to be famous for people to want to take note - but anything which encourages readers to read more is definitely worth our support.

More here as Twitter's bookworms definitely find their niche.

The pros and cons of (il)legal downloading

An interesting handful of responses to a letter on the subject of file-sharing and downloading. The original letter can be found here. The responses, published today in the Guardian, can be found here.