G.HO.ST – A demo of future computing

It was a week back I got the invitation to join G.ho.st from one of my friends and he told me that they offer as much as 15 GB storage space and an extra 5 GB for every successful refferal you make. Although I joined I was expecting nothing more than an online storage space from it. But when I started using it, I found it much more than just some storage space.

G.ho.st is more of a virtual computer. It offers almost everything a normal computer can offer. It has a music player, a video player, document editor, spreadsheet editor and presentation makers. It support almost all file types including docx and xlsx. In addition to these features there is a number of online web applications that can be used from the virtual machine. Applications range from games to torrent downloaders.

I am not feeling well, I will finish this post later.

Google Vs. Microsoft..story getting hotter..

Seems like Microsoft has gone panicky with the recent announcements from Google and the hype its causing. They are trying everyway to counter it and get over their nightmares. Chrome when it came as a browser itself, caused so much of trouble for the Microsoft people. But that was pretty ok. IE was never a trump card for MS in the market. Although I am a regular windows user, I never ever use IE. Its such a horrible terrible thing in every possible way.

When Google came in with chrome that was goddamn light(pops up the second u click it..) and with innovative features like the “Incognito window” (something that was very essential for my kinda ppl) they too fought back with IE8 where they called incognito as “in-private”..And guess what they came up with as a promo..well they came up with this..

That was such a pathetic ad that i cudnt even believe that was a product of MS. Infact this OMGIGP will catch u if u just use IE.

It was at this point Google came up with the idea of extending Chrome to an OS..an internet based OS. The first response from MS  to it was the usual one, mock at it. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was trying to belittle Chrome as just an “interesting” thing.”Who knows what this thing is? To me, the Chrome OS thing is highly interesting,” said Ballmer, choosing his words carefully and drawing more amusement from the largely pro-Microsoft crowd.”It won’t happen for a year and a half and they already announced an operating system,” he added, referring to Google’s Android system for smartphones. [Taken from a Reuters report].

Good one Mr.Ballmer, perhaps you should watch this video before making another comment.

Mr. Ballmer do you remember one of the comments thats pictured in that video that was actually made by you. May be in a couple of years that statement can be replaced with the one you just made.Ok now if you dont see Google as a competitor at all, then why did u just hit the panic button. You guys were running around announcing Microsoft Gazelle , a browser with a kernel funda, that is built for clouds. Well thats the same thing but even better what Google aims by Chrome OS. And what was that all of a sudden announcement for an online version of MS word for?And Office 2010 too…Because you know it well that Windows is the trump card. The rest of the story is dependant on the future of Windows. If MS lose the OS bussiness, then they are finished. So its absolutely necessary to fight off this threat. Doesnt matter if it takes to use a ‘Puking’ ad.

The Google Crome OS

Wow..it seems like google is planning to take over the world. This time its an OS from them and they call it the Google Chrome OS. The official blog calls it an “extension” of the Chrome browzer, they were kidding. Chrome OS is a lightweight, open-source PC-operating system that is built over the Linux kernel. And like most google products its supposed to be free of cost as well. Now thats a real deal..all the freedom of open-source and the support of a giant, thats most men’s dream.

The very concept the Chrome OS is that its the browzer thats the real OS. Most applications are kept online. Now what the OS is supposed to provide is a quick-starting light and power saving OS that can support this concept. Cynics might ask then how can it be a danger to the current  OS giant Microsoft when chrome is not designed for those power users out there at all. The issue gets strong when the figures show that most of the PC users are not the so called power users. They use PC to access the net, to stay in touch, to make words docs, spreadsheets and do presentations.People dont want to worry about carrying around files and searching out for drivers. Now for them Chrome is the answer to their prayers. And they are the majority. But of course those power users are gonna have a bad time with Chrome. Those like the multimedia eds and the gamers. But they are just a handfull in this world.

The announcement came this tuesday night and in just two days itself it has become one of the most discussed topics in the internet world. People are shooting questions on more detailed informations on the OS and its supports. Unconfirmed reports are coming from around the globe regarding Google negotiating with most OEMs invluding Dell, HP, Asus and Acer. But till this moement they havent given an official comment on that.And as far as the experts can think, it will be a good offer for those OEMs as well. Afterall it can save them around $50 per machine.Considering the ability of Chrome to run on X86 and ARM processors there is every reason to think chrome to be better suited for Netbooks than Windows.

However I was feeling like its Google’s vision into the future. They have already understood computing cannot be contained in a small box. They have realized cloud is the future. With the ability of clouds to share resources the internet becomes the backbone of all computing and all you will ever need is a browzer(what will a browzer look like at that time is something I cant predict).Now in that scenario, it will be the Chrome that makes the future. And what can we use Windows for then…perhaps to sit back and watch the clouds moving in the sky. I would like to quote a a few words I have read about this issue, “If indeed Google puts out a fast, easy to use operating system that lets netbooks soar and free users from constant software patches, Microsoft will find it very hard to explain to consumers why they should continue to use its software, other than just out of a foolish consistency.”

But at the end of the day,there is one thing that makes me wonder…what happened to the android project. HP already had plans to make it their OS for netbooks . Chrome is an entirely different OS and has nothing to do with the Android. Did they really drop the Android project or did they decide to keep it exclusive for the mobile devices. Man its Google. When they do something, there is always a purpose.

NetBeans – Move the Needle!!!

As they say,”help NetBeans to help you”. The ‘move the needle campaign’ aims at regular NetBeans users and other open-source enthusiasts to promote NetBeans. Promotions can be done through various means like
putting a logo on their website or blog telling we love NetBeans or if the site was built using NetBeans of course we can quote that.

A lot of logos banners and wallpapers are made available on the site for us to pic from.The wallpapers are really cool. And there are some CSS templates available in case you want to give ur website a Bean look. Not just that there are these logos available as track back codes. So that the netbeans people know whenever someone gets to their site by clicking a link in ur blog. They also put a list of such sites and blogs who promote them. You can register to that scheme by sending a mail to the NetBeans evangelist team. All the details are available at this link.

I have been writing this blog to promote them as well. Afterall i have taken a lot of help from them. Now is my chance to pay back…yours too..

NetBeans IDE 6.7 Release Candidate 1

Voila…here comes the latest installment in the Netbeans saga. I have always been a Netbeans fan. Although I have used more of IBM tools than Netbeans I should be honest enough to say that I enjoyed using Netbeans more than the other one. The primary reason was it was far too light than the Rational suite and far more user friendly. So I would be among those who are the happiest when they release another version..More they release the better it gets.

Defenitely you will be interested in knwoing what is really new with 6.7. Well there are a lot of features depending on which technology you are using. Netbeans is very much misunderstood as a Java IDE , which is a wrong idea. Its a lot more than just a Java IDE. It currently supports a lot of other technologies like Ruby, C++, PHP,etc…It was pretty recenty they released 6.5, it was good and stable. Well not very recently,last November actually.

So the big question is whats new with this one. I will just copy those features from there site..Please dont sue me under intellectual property rights, please I cant type them all:

v  Connected Developer Create Kenai-hosted projects from within the NetBeans IDE Locate and open sources for Kenai-hosted projects in the IDE Full integration with Bugzilla
v  Maven Improved code completion for Maven plugin parameters Support for Web Services creation and consumption POM Editor and Navigator enhancements J2EE support
v  PHP Code coverage and Selenium support SQL code completion in the PHP editor PHPUnit output improvements
v  GlassFish Derby support registers Derby associated with v3 Prelude instance Code completion support for v3 Prelude as sole registered Java EE server Added Hierarchy to the Tree View in the Services Explorer
v  Groovy and Grails Out-of-the-box support for Grails 1.1 Code completion Disable browser opening on run and configure platforms to use with Grails projects Invoke Grails command or custom script from context menu item
v  Ruby and Rails Remote debugging support Improvements to Ruby constants support Run and debug actions for test cases and suites included in context menu Support for Shoulda tests
v  C/C++ Profiling support for C++ projects (with minimal overhead!) Integrated support of popular Qt library and tools More refactorings and code generation in the C/C++ editor Macro expansion view to analyze preprocessor output
v  Profiler Enhanced Self Diagnosis with “Profile Me Now!“ Export profiling data into CSV, HTML and XML file formats HeapWalker supports OQL queries to analyze the contents of the heapdump
v  Debugger Debugger options to customize debugging process Easy viewing and setup of sources before start of debugging session
v  Java Generated source roots now displayed in the Projects tab Struts library migrated to version 1.3.8
v  Java ME / Mobility Bundled with the Java Platform Micro Edition Software Development Kit 3.0 Support for the Java Card Platform Full support for SVG Rich Components in the Visual Mobile Designer Improvements to the SVG Composer
v  Platform Enhancements to Output Window, Update Center catalog and Search performance Improved toolbar behavior and declarative MIME type resolvers Ability to change extension of files

Huh..thats a pretty long list. Suggest them something u miss in this list and that might be a reason for the next release. By the way you can download your favourite version from here. Needless to say its absolutely free and sometimes when you download you might end up getting a bit more than a wonderful IDE. Because the last time I went there, I stumbeld upon the ‘Netbeans Refer a friend’ program and I ended up getting three really cute pen drives. Take a look at that:

This one glows in red when connected, makes it really a beauty in dark. So thats just another reason to get your hands on the latest Netbeans.

Oracle Buying Sun for 7.4 million!!!

Oops that was pretty shocking to hear that Oracle is buying Sun for 7.4 billion dollars,shocking because of so many reasons.Reason one is I never knew it was ought to happen.After those rumours that IBM is acquiring Sun I shud have been expecting it.And I was expecting to know that a bit earlier because our University has strong tie ups with Sun.Secondly its the recession that made it unexpected.It was heard that the companies are finding it hard to pay their employees and at that time such a big acquisition sounded pretty odd to me.

Despite of the initial shock I am happy to see that still companies have the potential to expand and thats is good sign at this difficult time.The interest IBM,HP and Cisco showing on expanding is even more encouraging. Being a tech graduate I am also one of those who are really concerned about the global economic meltdown.So this becomes a happy day for me.Sounds naive right,then I will make it worse in the rest of the article. But for me the sad part is that I was promised a two or three flash drives (for the Netbeans Promo) and a few tshirts for some other promo, which i don’t even remember what it was,are all in jeopardy. I hope either they will either postpone the acquisition or Oracle will live be good and honest enough to keep that promise…oops…did I write this at the wrong time…sorry…