The Catling Mindswipe

Software Freedom Day is an annual, worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The goal is to educate the public in the benefits of using high quality free software in education, in government, at home, and in business. Software Freedom Underpins our Human Rights In a time when our lives are increasingly dependent on technologies, it is important we take the time to consider the impact of technology on our lives and the importance of ensuring technology isn't used to limit us, but rather to take us further along a path of opportunity, innovation and freedom for all people.  Software Freedom Day is everywhere! SFD is a yearly celebration with thousands of teams organizing Software Freedom Day in many cities in many countries to promote, educate and distribute free software. Go to http://softwarefreedomday.org/ to find out just how much goes on and how to participate - or dive right in and organise an SFD event of your own using the Start Gui

I attended a conference recently and courtesy of another attendee, got my paws on the Motorola Xoom, a tablet running Android 3.1  Originally pitched as the rival to the iPad, early sales of the Xoom were disappointing. As trade began to pick up, along came iPad-2 and knocked the Xoom back again. But Motorola pushes on, an established name in mobile technology. Is the Xoom the device to further Motorola's reputation?

Start a conversation about smart phones and you will soon move onto Android; which version you're running, whether it's better or worse than Apple's iOS on iPhone or BlackBerry OS on, err, Blackberry.  Google has given us several successful versions of the Android mobile operating system but it has been plagued by the unusual problem of fragmentation; the device manufacturers and OEM's have forked their own versions and spooned various components onto it, with the resulting perception by customers that Android itself is fragmented into numerous different versions. The trouble is Android is an umbrella term for mobile device operating system software that is deployed on numerous versions and manufacturers. Given to the world by Google as an open standard, the phone manufacturers have taken it, overlaid their own skins and supplementary applications (or worse, substituted their own) then maintained a baseline version on the devices they sell long after newer vers

One of the good things you get on Google's Blogger platform is a decent set of statistics by way of traffic analysis to your site. I took a look at this for the first time in a while and found a some interesting numbers. I'm particularly looking at the kinds of visitors I'm getting on the Catling Mindswipe blog , which I can deduce from the web-browsers and operating systems they use; these are identified in the page requests which hit the server... It has to be said, this is by no means a failsafe way to identify incoming traffic, as both browser and operating system identification can be spoofed for a variety of legitimate reasons (blame software standards or the lack thereof). However, taking a look at the recent stats for July 2011, this is what we see: Pageviews by Browsers  (48%) Firefox  (29%) Chrome  (14%) Internet Explorer  (3%) Opera  (2%) Safari  (1%) Konqueror  (<1%) Mobile Safari  (<1%) GranParadiso (Firefox 5) (<1%) Midori  (&l

At risk of recycling OMGUbuntu's article from last week , I have the Ubuntu 11.04 Beta upgrade and the results are... mixed.

Full Circle Podcast Episode 24 OGG Camp, Part Two is available from the Full Circle site In this episode, two talks, two guests and a raffle... (with a warning about the audio quality!) Full Circle Podcast is also a proud member of the Tech Podcasts Network . File Sizes: OGG 35.7Mb MP3 26.2Mb Runtime: 1hr 18mins 57seconds Feeds for both MP3 and OGG: RSS feed, MP3: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed RSS feed, OGG: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed/atom   Your Host: Robin Catling (blog at http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.com/ , @robincatling on Twitter) Additional audio by Victoria Pritchard Show Notes   01:32 | WELCOME and INTRO: About OGG Camp 11 In case you missed OGG Camp PartOne , OGG Camp is a joint venture organised by the Ubuntu UK podcast and Linux outlaws teams. In this, it's third year, OGG Camp came South to the Farnham Maltings venue . These are some of the highlights of what happened on Sunday

I have a GooglePlus account, with which I have done nothing. Partly because it's still a closed Beta and not everyone I know is in the 20 million internationally, but mostly because Google has rushed out a half-baked product to suit itself. I'm talking about the perceived screw-up with names and identities.  Before you howl "Google doesn't listen to its' customers" (us), please remember that you are Google's product , the customers are the advertisers who pay the bucks.

I constantly moan about Linux users either diving right into, or worse, being forced into, terminal sessions with command line interfaces. Why, with the plethora of graphical user interfaces from which to choose, would you want to do that? Erm, because sometimes it's quicker and you're not mediated (translation: obstructed) by a poor file manager and search. Honestly, not all terminal commands are bad. Dangerous, sometimes, but not bad. Remember command lines don't kill computers, people do. Some of the terminal commands I use frequently - with parameters in place of anything between the{} - are: File Operations cd {directory} –  changes path to the specified folder. Navigate around your drive. ls – list the content of the current folder. See what's on there. pwd – shows your current location on the file tree. Just in case you lose your bearings. mkdir {directory} – creates a new folder (directory). Make new places to put stuff. cp –r – {directory} copies a

Full Circle Podcast Episode 23 OGG Camp, Part One is available from the Full Circle site . In this episode, the Unconference Begins... (with a warning about the audio quality!)  Full Circle Podcast is also a proud member of the Tech Podcasts Network .   Feeds for both MP3 and OGG: RSS feed, MP3: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed RSS feed, OGG: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed/atom Your Host: Robin Catling (blog at http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.com/ , @robincatling on Twitter) Additional audio by Victoria Pritchard   Show Notes 00:40 | WELCOME and INTRO: About OGG Camp 11 OGG Camp is a joint venture organised by the Ubuntu UK podcast and Linux outlaws teams, taking over from the sadly departed LUG Radio live. In this, it's third year, OGG Camp came South to the Farnham Maltings venue . These are some of the highlights of what happened on Saturday, Day One. None of the names have been changed to protect the gu

This e-book in PDF format begins with some common computer user issues, before declaring:   Ubuntu 11.04's Unity interface wants to turn these scenarios into problems of the past. Unity's foremost goal is to get you Simplicity. Elegance. Speed. Responsiveness. It's all here. This is the Ubuntu Unity (11.04 edition) user guide we all needed months ago, provided by the Ubuntu Vancouver LoCo team . Not that it isn't welcome; with general chapters such as 'Unity in 15 Minutes' and 'Unity. How It All Fits Together,' you also get detailed breakdowns such as 'Personalizing the Launcher', 'Using the Dash' and introductions to Unity concepts such as 'What is a Lens?' This is a 98-page e-book and the first fifty pages do an excellent job of explaining the Unity interface with annotated screen-shots. It is all thoughtfully presented in plain language, with plenty of whitespace on the pages giving it a clear, uncluttered layout

A free two-day event about technology, open source, music, art, politics, community, creativity, and more! August 13 & 14, Farnham Maltings, Hampshire UK. So quickly here, so quickly over. It's all done. So I did very little for two days except sit on my butt and be greatly entertained and informed by both speakers and other attendees. Straight into Day Two's highlights. In no particular order: Careers in Open Source, by LornaJane Mitchell was a big draw, although I was upstairs for the next two; Andy Piper on MQTT , MQ Telemetry Transport, an open protocol developed out of MQ series Message Queueing Laura Czajkowski encouraged us to experience Life in Open Source Outside IRC Southampton OpenData project presented by Chris Gutteridge (with some delightfully manic Michael MacIntyre moments) showed just what you can put together with open data. a recording of the Dick Turpin Roadshow podcast the fine comedy turn that is the OggCamp Raffle and wrap-up (s

A free two-day event about technology, open source, music, art, politics, community, creativity, and more! August 13 &amp; 14, Farnham Maltings, Hampshire UK In the splendid venue at Farnham Maltings , a former distillery in the leafy Hampshire commuter town, the Maltings is now a local arts venue. With a great auditorium in the main space, upstairs meeting rooms, cellar bar and cafe for the informal meet-ups, there really was something for everyone. In the foyer, you could find Surrey LUG demonstrating 3D printing, Ken Fallon recording and posting in almost real time to Hacker Public Radio (which we are on), O'Reilly's discounted book stand and Bytemark Hosting. Among the talks and presentations, in no particular order: Intro and welcome by the Linux Outlaws and UUPC folks The insightful and entertaining Simon Phipps on Software Freedom Karen Sandler on source code secrecy in medical devices gnome foundation Professional music production with Linux; Wayn

We're packing our bags and going to OggCamp 11 this weekend (August 13 & 14, 2011), at Farnham Maltings in Surrey in the UK. OggCamp 11 is a two-day unconference bringing together the most interesting people from the Linux, Open Source and Hardware Hacking communities to share their passion and knowledge on all things geeky in a barcamp-style atmosphere. Since OggCamp is an unconference, speaking schedules are set on the first day and everyone is free to propose a talk themselves. There may be a few ticket returns available at the door, but don't bet on it, the 400 tickets officially went weeks ago and there's a wait-list. Expect some posts and podcasts to come out of the event. RC

As far as I can work out, LibreOffice was a bad boy and took over as the default application for a bundle of file types, including Portable Document Format (PDF's); which LibreOffice does an extremely bad job of opening! Fortunately, there is a quick way of setting the default application to open any kind of file. To set the default application to open a given type of file: In Nautilus, right-click on a file of the filetype in question - in my example, having the .PDF extension, Choose "Properties" from the context menu. In the "Properties" dialog, click on the "Open With" tab. Select the application default for the filetype. I choose Document Viewer (Evince, in my Ubuntu installation) All files with the same extension will now be opened with this program by default. There's no need to restart, the change is effective immediately. RC

The quiet evolution continues. Linux Mint comes in twoflavors (I know, I know, cliché alert...), the rolling Debian release and the more established, Ubuntu-derived, periodic release. Mint 11, codenamed 'Katya' is the newest based on Ubuntu 11.04, re-spun with the Mint team's distinctive applications and software choices. If you are expecting revolutionary or cutting edge: don't. Mint 11 uses Ubuntu as its base, but with classic Gnome 2.32 as the default desktop environment. It remains, in our view the premier Linux for new users and migrants from the Redmond way of life. Call it conventional if you like, but it has polish and it's tried and tested. Linux Mint 11 comes with updated software, refinements and new features to make a comfortable desktop in use... Some people attribute Mint's dramatic rise in popularity to defecting Ubuntu users who are unhappy with Ubuntu Unity, I think there's more to it than than. Mint Installer I stil