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SoldierKnowsBest put together a casual video talking about the 10 breakthroughs to remember from 2009. It is obviously quite bias towards Apple as well as the main-stream companies, so it is best to view it as a recap of the products that made the biggest buzz in the consumer technology market in the last year.
Looking forward to the video showcasing the best open-source projects of 2009. Anyone?
Last week, I posted a video that took a humorous approach to the search engine battle between the California giants, and then new kid on the block, Bing. Interestingly, I came across this website that does a very simple move to give you the best of both worlds, at the same time. Just like how some people would argue that a portion of contemporary art is no more than a very basic idea that the artist came up with first, Bing vs Google is something for which its creator deserves credit simply because he came up with the idea before anyone else, and brought it to us, the users, to take advantage of.
One field, two search engines
Instead of opening two separate tabs to test out the two main search engines in competition right now, you can now view the results from both worlds, by the same click, and in the same window:
Bing vs Google, at the same time
Of course, on a small screen, it wouldn’t be too useful, but who has anything smaller than a 15.4″ with at least 1280 pixels in width? Viewing them side-by-side is as fair as you can get. And even if you insist on using one of them and not the other, it might be good practice to start off with Bing vs Google to make an accurate judgment first. And let’s not forget that there’s always Ask, Yahoo!, and a few others.
This is a short video by CollegeHumor that uses sarcasm to point out the possible lack of competition for the Google search engine:
Microsoft launched Bing in an attempt to make life difficult for Google. Not surprisingly, it is not working out so well, at least not at the moment. The main problem is that the search engine boom has been almost exclusively handed to Google, and they wasted no time in taking advantage. In fact, the word “search” has seemed to have disappeared from the English/Tech language, and users worldwide are referring to the daily process as “Googling”. That results in a clear advantage in Google’s favor leaving very little room for maneuver, especially with the regular users’ lack of interest in exploring the different options -- people just want to get to what they’re looking for in the quickest and easiest manner. Consequently, you might come across those who advocate the phrase “I love Google!”, as oppose to “I love the Internet”, giving credit to the technology giants for the actual content offered via the Web, not just the process of finding it.
Filtering the huge majority of search queries via a single search engine can be very dangerous, as it facilitates the process of censorship. Potentially, Google could have the power of controlling what is crawled and visible in the results, and what stay in the dark. Either way, as users of the information super highway, we can always benefit from more competition. Let’s hope the power remains where it belongs: With the people.
With the spread of open source alternatives to commercial applications, more and more users are going directly for free software, and might not even see the need to get a hold of bootleg copies of “professional” programs. Applications such as VLC, Filezilla or Firefox are obvious choices, and, coincidently, are completely free and open source. In fact, there are so many, that there are websites, such as OSLAT, that are exclusively dedicated to finding open source alternatives to commercial software.
When you assess the use of an average user, the common applications would be a web browser, media player, and office applications. And while the former two are well-secured in the open source domain, the latter leaves plenty of room for argument.
OpenOffice.org Writer
OpenOffice.org released version 3.0 in October of last year, and have recently come up with a refined 3.1 that is available for download. The bundle includes five applications:
In theory, this seems like solid gold as it offers all of the functionality that is needed, while being completely free and open source. However, the reality is somewhat different. When analyzing the office applications, we would have to compare them to Microsoft Office 2007 on PC, or the 2008 version on Mac. Even though they’re commercial, the huge majority are either willing to pay a relatively small fee to be legitimate owners, or have no problem obtaining illegal copies. Therefore, the main advantage has somewhat diminished, and we are left with some weaknesses:
Overall, OpenOffice.org 3.1 is comparable to the earlier versions of MS Office (2003 PC, 2004 Mac). For more users to come on board, there has to be a huge leap forward, such as that seen in other open source applications. Otherwise users will always be left with this feeling of unnecessary sacrifice when they venture with the free office applications. Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism, as the project can only improve and become more competent.
It seems that going open source with such fundamental tools, such as office applications, could just be the final step before embarking the big stage: the Operating System.
As a web designer, it’s quite a task to explain to a regular user the disadvantages of Internet Explorer 6.0. Mostly because there are so many reasons to hate the Microsoft browser, that anyone who has to deal with its annoyances will rush into yelling and swearing, and would never be able to make a rational argument. But generally speaking, this is why no one should even consider using IE6:
With all of those problems, IE6 continues to be a popular browser. In fact, 14% of the browser market share belongs to IE6. If you haven’t heard, there are strong movements across all corners of the Internet to wipe IE6 off of the world map:
RIP IE6
Despite the aggressive campaigns and awareness techniques, Internet Explorer continues to have a significant market share. Ironically, that is mainly Microsoft’s fault. Firstly, IE6 comes pre-installed with Windows XP. And since many users do not allow automatic updates, they remain using this primitive tool. To make it worse, Microsoft released Windows Vista, which was a complete failure, thus forcing users to downgrade to XP, and not not even upgrade their browser. So not only do they produce the worst web browser to date, they reassure it’s prolonged existence with an even worse operating system.
However, there is reason for optimism. The awareness campaigns are reaching more and more users and the Firefox add-ons are catching on by word of mouth. Much more importantly, the official release of Microsoft Windows 7 is just around the corner (ETA: October 2009), which will either ship with Internet Explorer 8, or with nothing at all. It’s simply a matter of time.
To all of the web designers and developers out there, I tell you: hang in there, this will all be over soon.
UPDATE: YouTube will soon be dropping support for IE6. Read about it here, or here.
The Microsoft Surface has been announced for a while now, but this video takes a sarcastic approach to the same advertisement Microsoft had used to market their new product. Besides the fact that it is hilarious, it’s also interesting to see how some new “innovations” do not always go hand-in-hand with users’ demands, but rather dictate what the user wants/needs:
It is an example of how many companies forget to look for what the user needs, as appose to coming up with features that can eventually be sold as a “must-have”.
Award-winning author and lecturer Michael Parenti made the argument that the Third World, the poor countries that are seen to be behind in terms of development and advancement, are not actually underdeveloped, as many assume, but they had been over-exploited. The reason behind the downfall of the majority of the countries on the planet can always be traced back to brutal colonialism that allowed richer countries to take advantage of another nation’s resources, leaving it in ruins. While that’s the political, socio-economic aspect of the issue, I think the same could be applied to technology, and its use in the third world.
No one can deny the increasing market share of open source technologies over the past few years. More and more regular home users are realizing the benefits of working with free software, and things can only get better. However, in many developing countries, such as Egypt, the open source trend has not caught up as one might have expected.
When proprietary software is expensive, and is a real pain to get support for, you would think that poor nations as the Land of the Pyramids would opt for the open source applications that are free, perfectly legal, and ever-improving. The reality, however, is the contrary. Very few names earn unconditional acceptance more than Microsoft and HP. Any entrepreneur would happily pay ridiculous amounts of cash for the satisfaction of knowing that he or she is using Microsoft products, therefore, the best. Any technical person, regardless of his or her particular field of expertise, would strongly urge the upper management to invest in HP hardware, because it is by far the best and most reliable.
Open source is the future
Even when it is abnormal not to use open source software, Egyptian companies, small and large, invest in brand names. For example, almost all hosting packages are on HP servers running Windows Server, with Microsoft SQL databases. That means that a company pays for an HP server, and instead of installing Red Hat Linux with Apache for example, they pay for a Windows Server license. And instead of using MySQL, they pay for Microsoft SQL. Suddenly, they’ve gone from cheap hardware with free software, to over-priced hardware, with unbelievably expensive software. Makes no sense whatsoever, but the Egyptian companies are ecstatic nonetheless.
Hosting is only one of the issues. Very few people would dare to give Linux a chance, hardly anyone would consider using open source alternatives to commercial products, and almost no one realizes how much money is being wasted for nothing. On an individual level, like most other developing countries, illegal copies of software are widely available and unanimously accepted.
So why do big companies like Microsoft and HP enjoy so much success in poor countries? Well, there are several reasons. On the one hand, many are simply unaware of the benefits, or even existence, of open source tools. On the other hand, educational institutions teach students to work with brand names, and so college graduates don’t know much better. Add to that the companies’ strategies in carrying out advertising campaigns to create the illusion that if a company works with a name that is not like theirs, they would be risking too much for anyone to handle. It is a sad story, and the future does not look too bright.
With the constant expansion of information available on the web, the curious ones out there are bound to think outside of the box, and go open source. However, for effective results, there needs to be government intervention, promoting free, legal software, and preventing big names from implying false information. Not only on a software level, but also on a hardware one. Many individuals compile there own personal computer for home use for dirt cheap, but then companies, even small ones, pay providers huge sums of money to have HP desktop computers for all of its employees. Extremely inefficient.
Unfortunately, Egypt is but another poor country taken advantage of by giant corporations in the technology realm. The Egyptian companies are not far behind because they are underdeveloped, but rather because they have always been over-exploited. However, with the spread of the web, the digital colonization is doomed to extinction, thus it is only a matter of time until open source becomes the way to be.
