Simon Scullion

James Governor of RedMonk raised a question that has come up a few times in the Lotus blogsphere, on the subject of Ubuntu as an IBM supported OS.

I mentioned the fact that DB2 is supported on Ubuntu, a fact which doesn’t really fit with some of the justification for not supporting Lotus Notes and Domino, that Ubuntu is not an “enterprise” operating system.

James followed up this morning, and wonders whether

Ubuntu really just isn’t seeing much in the way of enterprise adoption as yet

Sounds like a chicken and egg situation to me!

Ubuntu is an extremely popular desktop distribution, so in my opinion, chances are support for software like Lotus Notes on Ubuntu would go a long way to opening the door to further enterprise adoption. I realise this is not an adequate cost justification, but if we’ve managed to get the Notes 8 Beta running on Ubuntu by ourselves, my guess is there isn’t a hell of a lot that IBM would need to do to get this sorted.

One other point I have mentioned before (can’t remember where!) is that with Ubuntu support, could IBM Lotus not look to provide more of an “appliance” (along the lines of Nitix), if not for production, at least for testing or demonstration purposes?

With a consistent support for Ubuntu across the IBM portfolio, they could potentially provide a serious offering to the SMB market. Taking the appliance approach and therefore “hiding” the underlying technologies somewhat, certain barriers to entry could be eliminated, at least from an install / admin standpoint.

Good luck trying to get more on this one James, there are lots of us very interested in where it could lead!

I’ve heard a bit about the $100 laptop, but nothing in any detail, so I found this an interesting read.

Put simply, the XO is one of the most revolutionary computer systems that I’ve seen in some time. The entire time I was looking at the XO, I was thinking, why can’t my new expensive laptop do this?

Some of the hardware sounds very interesting, particularly a black & white screen that is visible in strong sunlight, and the extraordinarily low power consumption.

The Sugar interface includes some extremely interesting capabilities for managing files, tasks and applications. Also, when combined with the wireless networking of the XO, the Mesh view in Sugar is one of the best and most innovative collaboration environments that I’ve ever seen.

I hope the big software vendors are keeping up. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for some of this innovation to make it through to mainstream applications.

Web 2.0, old news!?

Emerging Technology - Desktops and Notebooks - Meet the XO

Via Bob Sutor (again!)

This is an interesting article (for anyone with an interest in maps!)

I’ve got Dad to thank for that!

It talks about how the internet is changing the way we think and use maps and map-based interaction.

I know I couldn’t imagine going back to a time without Google maps.

Via Bob Sutor

I saw this from Kevin Pettitt, and just couldn’t resist! Kudos from Josep Alemany for kicking this off!

So here are a few ideas from me!

Idea #1 Taking a flat “classic” logo and incorporating it. Not sure I like the mix, too many colours.

Idea #2 Similar idea, but taking the more modern superman emblem. A little heavy, again, I don’t think this is a particularly good blend.

Idea #3 Here I looked to better incorporate the Superman logo, adjusting the colours a little. A lot better I think, I quite like this one, though it is a little complex, not quite in tune with the modern Notes 8 “web 2.0″ style logo.

Idea #4 I had to include one like this following Nathan’s efforts! Fun, but the Notes association is too weak.

Idea #5 - my favourite! I actually really like this one, if I do say so myself! I think the colours and style blend the two logos well, in tune with the new Notes 8 logo!

Kevin, if you’d like to use one of these, let me know, I’d be honoured!

This was just for a bit of fun, but feel free to comment! Let me know if you love/hate them, have any other ideas for variations, or need others on a similar theme!

Luis Suarez’s latest post talks about internal blogging, and asks us to help with some research by filling in a survey.

“We are currently conducting research into the topic of internal blogging within companies.
As part of this study we are inviting company bloggers to complete a short questionnaire in the form of an online survey available at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=lyaeUenyBMkZDwXKRMRd7w_3d_3d

The questions deal with some general questions about your blog, about your motivation to blog and the impact of your blog.
All data collected will be anonymous, and in the written report of the research it will not be possible to identify the individuals who contributed to the study, nor their affiliations.

Should you be interested in the findings of the research once it is complete, there is a place on the survey to leave your email address to which a report will be sent.
If you have any questions about the work, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for participating.“

So if you have an interest or any experience with internal blogging, go give them your thoughts.

As if not knowing our multiple tables wasn’t enough, now it turns out we can’t read either!

More than 10% of the 1,000 parents asked had struggled to understand some words in the stories they had read to their five to 10-year-old children.

Parents said that they made up words they could not read or missed out difficult passages, the survey said.

How difficult is it!?

I really enjoy reading to my nearly-two-year-old daughter. While I realise books of any complexity suitable for ten-year-olds will likely be more challenging than baby stories, in some ways I think they are harder to read! You have to work harder to make them interesting, with tones of voice and changes in volume.

An interesting article on the makeup of the open source stack.

One line that caught my eye (emphasis mine):

But Alfresco’s customers significantly skew toward the Global 2000 plus leading government and nonprofit organizations: ….. European Commission, …. etc.

It’s possible that these organizations represent the lunatic fringe of the software-using world but, in fact, many of these would generally be considered late adopters or mainstream adopters.

Interesting, particularly following the rumours of the EC’s use of Office 2007. Looks like they don’t necessarily fall into the late, or mainstream adopters category.

Open source applications…magnets for open source infrastructure | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Just catching up on a couple of things, a few posts on the beeb have caught my attention lately.

Broadband prices

An interesting article on the price of broadband worldwide. Not sure how valid the comparisons are, but I know that here in Spain we continue to be shafted, I’m currently paying just under 40€ for 1Mb (soon to go up to 3Mb)!

Sony BMG Vs Amergence Group

Ironic. And who benefits? Not the customer then. Enough said.

BBC iPlayer

More positive news, the BBC appears it’ll start to listen to opinion on the need to make this more open. I must admit, I was surprised at some of the choices made for the initial release.

How good is your maths!?

Do you fall into the 1 in 14 who can’t solve the following!?

What is one eighth of 32?

• a) 6
• b) 4
• c) 2
• d) 8
• e) None of these
• f) Don’t know

Shocking!

I have had this installed for a while, just never got around to trying it out!

If you’re interested in trying it out while it is still in beta you can find it here: http://get.live.com/betas/writer_betas

If Microsoft had used Open Standards from the moment it was founded in 1975, this problem would not exist.

Couldn’t have put it better myself! The problem being discussed is, you guessed it, Microsoft’s proprietary file formats.

Via Chris Linfoot from the Free Software Foundation Europe, on the beeb