Moments ago Novell and Microsoft made an announcement few would have predicted. Not our shareholders. Not our partners. Not our employees. Not the industry pundits. Not the Open Source community. And perhaps least of all – not our customers. Make no mistake, a few months ago, I would have taken the “under” if asked if a landmark deal between our two proud companies could get done that truly benefited the community that mattered most – the customers who use and rely on our mutual technologies.

I’m not saying for a moment the other stakeholders referenced above don’t matter. They do and the impact of today’s announcement on these parties will be discussed at length by my colleagues (Jeff Jaffe, Nat Friedman, Miguel de Icaza) and others inside and outside Novell and Microsoft. But it’s clear to me that the long term success of every single community mentioned is defined, shaped, impacted and influenced by the folks who write the checks. I suspect most of them / you are saying “It’s about time!”. As our CEO Ron Hovsepian stated, “Too often technology companies ask their customers to adapt to them. Today WE are adapting to our customers.”

Opinion — Someone just asked me whether, now that Novell’s become buddies with Microsoft, I’ll be turning away from Novell/SUSE as one of my favorite Linux distributions. My answer is no. I’m sticking with SUSE Linux on both my desktops and servers. Here’s why.

First, like many of you, I do think that Novell’s deal with Microsoft is a mistake. While in the short run, I think the deal will be good for Novell. It will, after all, get its Linuxes into shops that would otherwise turn up their noses at anything without Windows in the title. In the long run, I can’t think of a single software company that has ever done well in an alliance with Microsoft. Can you?

Besides the integration with Google Talk, orkut is about to have other new features. Here’s what I found:

orkut SMS

With orkut SMS you can send and receive scraps with your mobile phone as well as other cool stuff. But first you need to register your mobile phone to use orkut.

Photo Tagging

You can tag your friends in photos. To create a photo tag, click and drag the mouse to select a friend.

I don’t use orkut, so maybe someone who does could make an educated guess about these new features.

Now Google Video shows a button that says “play again” at the end of a video. This is useful, although a little redundant, as you can always click on the play button after the video ends.

If you click on the arrows next to the number of views, you’ll discover more information about the video: the number of views from the day before, the rank of the video and its evolution. It might be useful to see the popularity of a video.

To increase the number of views, Google should show related videos overlayed on the video, like YouTube does. There is a list of related videos in the right sidebar, but not many people look there.

{ Thank you, Kent Dodds. }

The new Windows Live Local shows the Earth in 3D. Although it requires to download a 5MB application and it needs a lot of resources, the result is an attempt to emulate Google Earth in a browser. Unfortunately, that browser is Internet Explorer.

You’ll be able to see 3D maps only for major cities in the US. But they won’t look very nice unless you have a broadband connection and a graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX 9, with 3D hardware acceleration enabled.

Microsoft did an interesting thing by adding 3D maps into a browser, but they need to improve the performance of their app and the imagery.

Note: to try this, set your regional options in Control Panel to United States and open this site in Internet Explorer. But only if you have Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista.

I hate to disappoint the two people who thought this blog is created by Google™. This blog is not affiliated in any way with Google™. I don’t work for Google™.

For those who thought this blog tries to mislead people, I say it just tries to be an unofficial source of information about Google™. I didn’t use this BlogSpot subdomain to trick people that might be looking for the Official Google™ Blog or other Google™’s blogs. In fact, when I started this blog, Google™ didn’t have too many blogs.

Google™ repeatedly said it doesn’t build an operating system (or a browser), so the name of my blog is just a metaphor for all their web applications that might diminish the value of a real operating system. It’s not the name of a Google™ product.

I try to be objective, although I don’t pretend to be a journalist, and try to create the blog I’d like to read in the morning on my laptop. That means the opinions presented here are my opinions and Google™ is not responsible for them.

Note: this post (and hopefully this blog) respects Google™’s Guidelines for Third Party Use of Google Brand Features, Google AdSense™’s terms of use and other policies and terms of use.

*Google and Google AdSense are trademarks of Google Inc.

I wrote last week that orkut and Google Talk are about to become friends. Checking the resource files from the last version of Google Talk using Resource Hacker, I’ve noticed there are already some messages that talk about an orkut integration:

45901, “orkut”
45902, “New feature! Chat with your orkut friends.”
45903, “View orkut profile”
45905, “Change how your orkut friends are shared with Google Talk.”
45906, “Send scrap”

From the other side, here’s an example of mail invitation from orkut.

Your orkut friend, [email], would like to chat with you using Google Talk.

Google Talk is a downloadable Windows application that lets you chat, make free voice calls, and share files with friends inside and outside your orkut network.

Now, it’s easy to add your orkut friends to your Google Talk friends list. You’ll see their chat availability in orkut, and you can even send scraps (and get scrap notifications) right from Google Talk!

But if you want, you can disable Google Talk’s integration with orkut.

VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a common client-host desktop sharing system. We can make use of it to control remote desktop across different operating systems.

SLES 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) provides both client and host applications. Using command vncserver, we can start a new vnc service and wait for connection.

$ vncserver

However, we may sometimes find a black screen instead of a gnome envorniment.

Why? It’s because the gnome has not been well configurated.

You should now edit file file ~/.vnc/xstartup

Find the section where it says

twm &

and replace it with

exec gnome-session &

The gnome should now wook fine!

http://taiwan.cnet.com/news/software/0,2000064574,20111342,00.htm
Red Hat：微軟、Novell合作是Linux界的勝利

CNET新聞專區：Richard Thurston與Graeme Wearden　　06/11/2006
Red Hat周五很快就對微軟與Novell的合作潑了一盆冷水。

Red Hat在兩公司達成協定後幾小時內就在網站上公開回應，宣稱這項合作不單單是Novell一家公司的勝利，而是整個Linux界的勝利。Red Hat另外也駁斥會和微軟有類似合作。

上周四，微軟與Novell簽定合作，雙方協議微軟將對需要混合微軟專屬系統及開原碼軟體的企業推廣使用Novell的Suse Linux。兩家公司也將一同開發虛擬化、Web services及開原碼文件格式。

「本合作正顯示了Linux界的勝利開原碼的創新努力造就了更好的軟體及更高的價值，」Red Hat在其回應聲明中指出。「開放標準本來就提供互通性讓人人可以實作，不需要兩家公司簽定合作才辦得到。」

在被問到是不是會和微軟簽定類似的專利合作，Red Hat答覆「創新的代價難以想像，自由與開原碼軟體正提供了真正創新的必要環境。」

上周對Red Hat來說不啻是最難熬的一周，因為微軟與Novell宣佈合作之前，甲骨文才推出自有Linux，它不但以低於Red Hat一半的價格鎖定Red Hat客戶，而且還即將推出開原碼作業系統。

而微軟與Novell合作也受到業界觀察家的注意。自由軟體基金會律師Eben Moglen告訴CNET News.com記者，這項協議可能與GPL的條款發生衝突。

「如果你簽定一項合作，對任何散佈GPL軟體的人收取授權費用，那就不是在GPL之下散佈這個軟體了，」Moglen說。這項合作是不是將Novell排除在自由散佈Linux之外，要看雙方合作的確實內容，他說。

開原碼定義(Open Source Definition)創辦人Bruce Perens看法雷同。

「需要釐清的一個問題是，Novell會不會因為只對Novell客戶提供專利保護而導致違反GPL，它可是Linux核心及其他開原碼的重要授權方式。」Perens在其部落格中指出。

法律網站Groklaw看法則更嚴厲。

「我應該要到廁所去吐一下，」Groklaw創辦人Pamela Jones說。「我想微軟再也不會把Linux比喻成癌症或共產黨。現在它只想Linux那收取授權費用，這是不是和SCO最初企圖有異曲同工之妙？」

她繼續說道，「我不想潑Ballmer冷水，但Suse Linux是GPL原始碼，這點將會成為雙方合作過程中的疙瘩。」

Novell歐洲區總經理Chris Papayianni目前對Novell是不是會違反GPL規定尚無法評論，他只表示，本合作將對Novell在英國的合作注入一股強心針。

「經由與微軟的合作，將能協助我們擴大Linux的觸及層面，它可使我們和Windows環境具有很好的相容性。」

Papayianni補充說道， Novell與微軟的合作也有助於強化該公司和其他Linux公司競爭的優勢。「我們客戶需要把伺服器做更好的整合，一家英國客戶資料中心電費帳單高得驚 人，伺服器減少就能降低用電量。這可以使我們在資料中心市場上比競爭者多了一項利器。」