Technology

Under the agreement, Microsoft will provide sales support for Novell's SUSE Linux distribution. More importantly, the companies will also create a joint research facility where they will be working together on improving the interoperability between SUSE Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems, including:

• Virtualization
• Web Services for managing physical and virtual servers (this builds, of course, on top of the Virtualization framework)
• Document format compatibility (between Open Office and Microsoft Office)

The first two will benefit mostly other companies, while the third aspect will greatly benefit both individuals and companies. I'm a big fun of Open Office. I use it all the time, and I'm already loving the idea of having better conversions between both suites.

Here is Reuter's news posted on the WSJ:

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-microsoft-novell.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Here are some links from Microsoft's PR site:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-02MSNovellPR.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2006/11-02NovellInterop.mspx

Novell has a dedicated site with plenty of information about the deal too:

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/

Wanna know what some people is thinking? Digg has about two full pages (right now) for a simple search on Novell Microsoft (including plenty of comments):

http://www.digg.com/search?area=all&age=7&sort=new&s=novell+microsoft&submit=Search

Some other blogs posting about it:

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=35972

http://www.foogazi.com/2006/11/02/linux-software-on-windows/

http://opensourceblog.itproportal.com/?p=203

http://mrwavetheory.blogspot.com/2006/11/microsoft-and-novell-foes-now-friends.html

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061102-8141.html

And sooo many more. I shall stop though, or otherwise google might consider this post to be just a link farm.

So, my opinion? This is great, great news!

Not only this is great news because of this particular deal on itself and how both companies, their clients, their shareholders, individuals and other players can benefit from it, but also because it sets the record for the first big venture of its kind.

In other words, this will probably trigger other similar partnerships and stimulate more cooperation among different players in the industry as the market keeps opening itself and different organizations start doing business together at a more horizontal level. This will also be a very good boost for the market, brining new business and probably opening several opportunities to many other small players. It's just brilliant.

Tranpoline Systems has released the Enron Explorer, a very nice web-2.0-ish tool that lets you explore through Enron's 200,000 internal e-mails available on the public domain.

The little Java applet integrates nicely with the web interface and lets you browse through the social network (graph). The web interface lets you see the e-mails on every inbox and also browse by themes and/or people by using tags.

There is also a nice search toolbar. For example, you could search for:

demand response and get back this: http://enron.trampolinesystems.com/focus/19185#focus=/search/demand%20response&unique=5

or golf and get:
http://enron.trampolinesystems.com/focus/19185#focus=/search/golf&unique=6

That's it. I'll leave the evil searches up to you.

For the past few nights, my TV has been competing with my notebook for my attention. TV lost. OK, I must admit, I do not have cable or satellite TV, but there are still a few good shows or series to watch.

The thing is, if I want news, why not browsing Google news? Why not my favorite newspaper (checkout Clarin)?

After that, I still have my blogroll (at your right) and some live bookmarks. Then I have e-mail and IM and IRC (yes, I still use IRC from time to time!), and .... Then I have the commercials-free popurls dashboard throwing at me an incredible array of fresh, fun and informative stories, videos, pictures and audio clips.

I also spend good quality time writing here. Or just hopping into last.fm.

This is just a small list. But I've truly found in the past few months that if I want serious distraction for my mind, I'll go grab my guitar or my keyboard and play some music or practice some jazz tunes or exercises. Otherwise, I prefer the fast, fresh and interactive social experience on the net. But the old days of just sitting on the coach without any interaction are mostly gone for me.

What do you think? Is this your case, too?

I've finally installed Kubuntu in my Dell Notebook (a Inspiron E1705). It's just lovely. Kubuntu really "gets it"! It looks and performs great and its really easy to use.

The installer from the live CD worked great. It even set up my wireless network card (Intel one) without any issues. OK, yes, I had to manually add a few things here an there (such as 915resolution, a mapping for the media buttons, the SMP kernel, etc), but that did not take too long: altough I'm more of an 'rpm' guy, setting up the extra goodies was very, very easy and straight-forward just using EasyUbuntu and Adept or apt-get.

Firefox, skype and Kopete all work great. I'm now starting to use Kontact and it looks really good so far. OpenOffice also seems to be running faster than it used to on my almost clean XP install on this very same machine. My USB mass-storage JVC HD video cam worked perfectly and automatically (altough it seems for some reason I did not get the full USB v2 speed --gotta look into it).

I've been using linux on the server side for years now, but this is the first time I'm really 100% pleased on using linux as a desktop user (not just to develop software) and on a notebook.

Hope you've enjoyed this article. Please share with me your experiences with Kubuntu or any other linux distributions. If you haven't yet experienced it, you can get free CDs shipped to you from their website!

Microsoft has released this Mon 19th their new Windows Live Messenger after a few weeks of beta testing. This marks an important line with their first Live product being released (BTW, Vista is still in Beta2). Here is the features overview and here is TechCrunch's post about it.

At this point in time, Yahoo Messenger with Voice version 8 is still in beta. It provides an extension mechanism through plug-ins, which can be downloaded from this gallery and developed by third parties using the publicly available Software Development Kit. Here is TechCrunch's post.

The way I read it, it seems Microsoft is going for a somehow business-orientated, closed and tightly controlled environment where users can easily share their data, files, contacts and content between the different "Live" applications, with the kick of having a centralized and up-to-date information repository. It seems though, users will probably need to use a good part of their Live products and services set in order to really benefit from the experience.

Yahoo, on the contrary, seems to be betting on a more entertainment-orientated, open, fun and friendly environment where users can customize the behavior of their applications (and therefore the way they share content and interact with each other) and add more functionality into the messenger application itself (as opposite to having several different applications sharing data from a unique repository).

Oh, and yes, Yahoo is also getting more serious about VoIP promoting their cheap PC to phone calls. This puts them in direct competition with Ebay's Skype, which has also been adding very cool new features as SkypeCasts, video support and more. Google talk seems to be slowly kicking in too, may be differentiating itself for its recognizable simplicity.

All this seems reasonable given the positioning of each of these companies. What's your pick?