System Information for WIndows (SIW) is a program you MUST have installed on your Windows computer.  It gives you all the information you could ever want to know about your computer in a nice easy to use interface.  I learned about it in a recent Computer User Magazine.  Here are some examples of the information it provides:

Motherboard:

PropertyValue

ManufacturerASUSTeK Computer Inc.

ModelP4P800-E

VersionRev 1.xx

Serial NumberMB-1234567890

North BridgeIntel i865P/PE/G/i848P Revision A2

Google’s new Chrome Web Browswer has been all over the news today.  See this general one here.  Or this one mentioning how it’s supposed to be a Microsoft killer.   This one talks about how blazingly fast it is.  (I agree!)  And, finally, this one talking about how Google is becoming more evil with the release of this web browser.   I decided to take it for a spin and cut through the hype.

On first startup, I thought - hmm this browser looks a bit bubbly.  Reminds me a bit of MSN Browser in the late 90s.  Then I suddenly noticed something - no top bar on the browser!  Where’s the File, Edit, Tools, menu so common to Windows programs?  Even the tabs are right up in the titlebar window.  But you know what?  I like it - more room for viewing my websites.  Tabs load up ridiculously fast.  And the little things are so nice - like how there are animations when you create the tabs.  They slide out from the left.  Or when you close a tab, all the ones to the right of it slide over to the left.  It’s pointless eye candy, but I love it!  It really adds to the experience.

25 to 50:

50 to 75:

75 to 100:

100 to 200:

600 to 700:

700 to 800:

Now if we could only get this on TV…

Another micro-blogging post?  What’s going on here?  Well, when I first did my micro-blogging post, Identi.ca had just gone public and I didn’t think there was a reason to join yet another micro-blogging service.  But two things came together to convince me to check out Identi.ca.  First of all, I’ve overcome my reluctance to using micro-blogging services.  Second, I heard an interview on Linux Outlaws with the creator of Identi.ca.

As you can see, it’s pretty much inspired by Twitter.  It has a very similar interface and reply mechanisms.  I got a good vibe from it - as I did with Twitter.  Something about the aethetics just made me want to use it - just like Twitter and unlike Pownce.  Of course, there are some negatives with Identi.ca being inspired by Twitter.  Chief amongst these is the reply functionality.  Only Plurk (with Pownce in a distant second) have correctly implemented replies in a way that makes sense.  Without a threaded reply, it’s pretty hard to correctly follow the conversation that may come out of something posted on Twitter and Identi.ca.  Of course, maybe that’s done on purpose.  Perhaps replies are an afterthought because that’s not what these micro-blogging services believe micro-blogging to be about.  I’d LOVE to see a mode in Identi.ca (just another tab, really) where posts could be viewed in a threaded fashion to be able to follow the conversation better.  That would help Identi.ca leapfrog over Twitter in useability and functionality.

I’ve never used Suse or openSuse.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a “loyal” Fedora user since Fedora Core 1 and I have Ubuntu on my laptop since it had awesome laptop support.  I even got some Suse CDs as a prize for the Letter of the Month from Linux Format magazine.  However, I never even tried it at that time as I was mad at Novell for the Microsoft pact.  I think it lends a lot of credibility to Microsoft’s BS argument that Linux violates its patents.

My latest pictures moving from one views group to another.

25 to 50:

50 to 76:

It’s been about a month since I signed up for a bunch of micro-blogging websites. So what do I think after about a month? Let me start off with Twitter.

In my first look at the micro-blogs I had some pretty good feelings about Twitter. That has basically carried over for the past few weeks. I added a Twitter plugin to my blog, using it for quick thoughts I don’t want to elaborate on with a blog post. I’m also using Twitux on my Linux computer for posting without having to load up the Twitter site. I haven’t really been using the Flock Twitter plugin because it doesn’t seem to update correctly or often enough. I’m enjoying using it for those quick thoughts. I’m definitely going to keep using Twitter for the foreseeable future.  So I feel the way about Twitter as I did a month ago - I like it.

Well, the latest craze to hit the Linux bloggers is talking about Empathy.  Everyone is talking about it.  It’s apparently going to be in the next version of Gnome and Ubuntu is considering replacing Pidgin with Empathy for the next release.  First of all, depending on how much work is done on Empathy between now and then, I think this may be a bad idea.  Ubuntu is the distro we give our Linux n00b friends to play with.  Pidgin can do (more or less) everything Trillian can do (and definitely everything AIM can do - except voice/vid).  Do we want them thinking that Linux is crap because they are using the feature incomplete Empathy?

Many people know the mantra - if you are a gamer or office worker, you use the OS from Redmond.  If you are a creative person such as a musician, video editor, etc you use a Mac.  Geeks use Linux.  But more and more people are moving away from Windows and seeking either Macs or Linux.  If you switch to Mac you have to spend a ton of money and if you switch to Linux, it’s free and you can use the hardware you already have.  But what if you’re a creative person?  Can you only go to a Mac?  Lots of people want to allow the creative people to come to Linux so there are more and more Linux distros for the creative types.  This month, in Linux Format Magazine, 64 Studio was bundled on the disc.  It doesn’t run as a liveCD or liveDVD so I’m running it in VirtualBox.  As you can see here, it is a Debian-based distro: