Arun's Blog

Mono, an open source project sponsored by Novell has released Moonlight 0.6 with profile 1.0 and profile 2.0. Moonlight profile 1.0 is based on Silverlight v1.0 and Moonlight profile 2.0 is based on Silverlight v2.0. Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to dethrone Adobe's flash player. Moonlight is Silverlight for Linux.

The above Moonlight versions are test installers, so they are not bug free. Firefox 3 support is known to be buggy, particularly as regards plugin detection
from javascript. The funny part is, these are currently built without multimedia support. No video or mp3 playback is enabled on these binaries.

CBS
Corporation has entered into an agreement to acquire
CNET Networks, Inc. CBS will make a cash tender offer for all issued and outstanding shares of
CNET Networks for $11.50 per share, representing an equity value of
approximately $1.8 billion. The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most
popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million
unique users per month, and approximately 200 million users worldwide. CBSNet?

Source: Yahoo News.

Mozilla Messaging team has released the first alpha of Thunderbird 3.0 codenamed Shredder. It's built on Gecko 1.9 platform. Here are some of the new features in Thunderbird 3.0, according to Mozilla Messaging.

• The new Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Thunderbird customization from the hundreds of Add-ons available from community add-ons website. This feature is similar to the feature in Firefox 3.0. Note that only few add-ons are compatible with this early alpha at the time of release, as add-on developers need to upgrade them.
• The address book can now read data from Mac OS X's system Address Book, but that feature is currently disabled by default. To enable it, see this blog entry New Crash Reporter (Breakpad) to report crashes in Thunderbird.
• Searching bodies of messages no longer produces as many false positives and has become more accurate in some multilingual situations.
• Improvements to JavaScript engine have resulted in continued improvements in performance.
• On the Mac, Thunderbird is now a native Cocoa application.

Installing Shredder Alpha 1 will overwrite your existing installation of Thunderbird on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. For all systems, you won't lose any of your messages or address books, but some of your extensions and other add-ons might not work until updates for them are made available. You can download the alpha 1 from here.

Verizon Wireless along with Mozilla joined the Mobile Linux group (LiMo). It's the first U.S. carrier to join the LiMo Foundation. LiMo already has the backing of large Asian and European carriers, as well as handset makers like Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

Kyle Malady, vice president of network for Verizon, said he expects the company to sell both simple and «smart» phones using LiMo next year. That's a potential blow to Qualcomm, which supplies the software for most of Verizon's phones, excluding smart phones.

Verizon is not going to replace other mobile OSes. It's going to offer LiMo along with other OSes which is what I support. I don't support Microsoft's monopoly nor do I support Linux monopoly. The market should be open to everyone to compete, so the benefits reach the common man. It'll give users an option to choose from LiMo, Windows Mobile, Android based phones along with other ones.

Source: Yahoo News, PC World.

This is my 1000th post after I started using Wordpress (I was using Nucleus before). Woof!!!

If you work with Oracle Database, then you might have heard about SQL Developer. SQL Developer is a free graphical tool for database development. I use this for some of my Oracle work. It's a decent tool and it's free.

When I upgraded my SQL Developer to the latest version (1.5.0.53), I lost my database connection settings. The settings worked the first time I created them in the new version, but it was lost the next time I opened the SQL Developer. When I tried to recreate, the save or connect key did not work. I finally fixed it as per the advise given in the OTN forum. All you have to do is edit the sqldeveloper.conf file located under C:\Program Files\sql developer installation folder\sqldeveloper\bin using notepad or wordpad and add the following lines to the end of the file. Save and restart SQL Developer. You should see your connection settings back.

AddJavaLibFile ../../lib/java/api/jaxb-api.jar
AddJavaLibFile ../../lib/java/api/jsr173_api.jar
AddJavaLibFile ../../j2ee/home/lib/activation.jar
AddJavaLibFile ../../lib/java/shared/sun.jaxb/2.0/jaxb-xjc.jar
AddJavaLibFile ../../lib/java/shared/sun.jaxb/2.0/jaxb-impl.jar
AddJavaLibFile ../../lib/java/shared/sun.jaxb/2.0/jaxb1-impl.jar

Washington Post reports that U.S. troops in Iraq now fights with viruses, not a viral or bacterial type. It's the PC virus that spread through porno DVDs they buy in bootlegged DVD markets in Iraq. Troops, you don't have to sacrifice watching porno, use Linux to watch them.

If you have installed Windows XP SP3 and your computer reboots endlessly after the update (If your computer has AMD processor) then here is the solution. Lots of users have reported having problem with Windows XP SP3. Jesper's blog explains in detail the types of problems and how to debug/fix them.

OpenOffice.org team has released the beta version of OpenOffice 3.0. You can download the beta version of OpenOffice 3.0 from here. Here are the new features or additions to OpenOffice 3.0.

• Mac OS X support without the need for X11. Thus, OpenOffice.org behaves like any other Aqua application.
• OpenOffice.org 3.0 supports the features of the upcoming version 1.2 of the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF).
• You can now open Microsoft Office 2007 files or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X.
• Enhanced spreadsheet and charts.
• Improved crop features in Draw and Impress.
• OpenOffice.org 3.0 allows collaborating on spreadsheets with multiple users.
• With support for 1024 columns; OpenOffice.org 3.0 can now handle significantly more data than before. Previous versions only supported 256 columns.
• OpenOffice.org Writer can now display multiple pages at the same time.
• With version 3.0, OpenOffice.org got an advanced notes features which displays notes on the side of the document.
• A new Start Center that allows you to chose which module you would like to use.

For more details and list of minor changes, refer to OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta site.

Source: OpenOffice.org

When Microsoft announced about Surface computing, all blogs and technology papers wrote a lot about it, but I didn't see anywhere in the blogsphere or tech papers I read, mention about the open source multi touch display. Engineers at Eyebeam, an art and technology center based in New York, have created a scaled-down open-source version of Surface, called Cubit.

By sharing the Cubit's hardware schematics and software source code, the engineers are significantly reducing the cost of owning a multitouch table. But they're also fostering innovation by giving engineers an open platform on which to develop novel multitouch applications--something that they've previously lacked.

While Microsoft's Surface costs $10,000, putting together a personal multitouch Cubit table could cost anywhere from $500 to $1,000, depending on the type of hardware used. Cubit is a boxy table with a clear surface. The single camera inside the table can be a simple webcam with an added infrared filter, and a
small image projector can be purchased for about $300.

I'm waiting for this to mature. It would be wonderful if you can buy a fully functional cubit for $500-$1000.

Source: Technology Review.