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There was a time when you could query nearly any Linux user and learn about all sorts of things that couldn’t be done under Linux. Whether it was the latest digital camera, a quirky scanner driver, a proprietary video card or a problematic printer, it seemed using Linux-based operating systems was an uphill battle and nothing “just worked”.

These days – at least if my experience this past week is any indication – the times seem to be a-changin’. My family and I had the good fortune and blessing to spend the recent Thanksgiving holiday with my Aunt and Cousin in Southern California, and a patently wonderful time was had by all. We Northerners all got to have some grand new experiences – sailing a 35-foot Hunter Legend around San Diego Bay, enjoying wine and appetizers on an 80° Thanksgiving afternoon, and seeing a Tesla Roadster up-close-and-personal were just a few. But as a Linux user, I got to have an unusual new experience that my Windows- and Mac-OS-piloting kin couldn’t share: I finally got to enjoy being the only one who could enjoy a completely-obvious and should-just-work feature of my computer that everyone else couldn’t.

Between my family and myself, we have all the major OSs covered. Present at the Thanksgiving feast this year were two Windows XP laptops, three Mac OS-X notebooks, and my trusty HP 6710b running Ubuntu Linux 9.04. In the next room, there was an HP DeskJet LaserJet 1020, which – it turns out – became an unwitting participant in our Thanksgiving week adventures. The 1020, you see, isn’t supported by HP under Mac OS X. No drivers, no instructions, no work-arounds … nada. But under Linux? Three clicks – two of them on “Next” buttons – and my Ubuntu test page was sliding out of the heretofore-recalcitrant printer. Not even the Windows users present could claim that sort of ease – they still had to download and install drivers from HP’s website.

Maybe it’s just me – and I’m admittedly biased – but I thought Macs were supposed to be easy to use, and just work! And I thought Linux was “supposed” to be for power-users only, difficult and cryptic, and fraught with ventures into the scary world of the command-line! I didn’t win any Linux converts during our week on the West coast, but I did get to enjoy a new and unusual experience, one that I’m sure will be replicated many times over as Linux shines as a truly ready-for-mainstream operating system.

Yes, this is last minute, but I just found out about an upcoming webcast – in theory – announcing the forthcoming Google Chrome OS. Watch here for updates…

13:02 EST — Apparently some presenters are stuck in traffic, webcast will begin soon…

13:05 EST — Webcast beginning – Google VP of prod development speaking. No launch today, about a year away from announcing a release… Lots of progress thus far…

13:06 EST — As of today, the code will be fully Open Source. Google developers will work on the same source tree as the rest of the world. Google Chrome is the foundation of everything being done.

13:07 EST — Chrome browser is now the main browser for 40 million users. Chrome’s Javascript performance is about 40% faster than IE. This makes rich web applications much faster, noticeably for user. There have been about 20 updates through the last year.

13:10 EST — Tons of new stuff coming this year in Chrome. Chrome for Mac ready for production use before end of 2009. Same for Chrome for Linux. Extensions system will be significantly enhanced as well. Extensions will be automatically kept up-to-date for users. Google is working hard to give web applications more opportunities to access system-level resources, from within the browser – web applications should have access to the GPU, multi-core CPUs (and threading), and real-time communication. More offline usability, with local storage. The whole idea is to give web apps the full functionality and richness of desktop applications. In 2010 all these APIs should be fully integrated into Chrome, Google is also working with other browser vendors.

13:12 EST — There have been powerful trends happening in the industry along with Chrome’s evolution. Netbooks have been growing hugely, despite economic hardships worldwide. There is also more pervasive usage of cloud computing researchers. There is also a lot of innovation on the device front – phones are getting smarter, tablets are showing up on the market, there is convergence between traditional form factors and small portable form factors. Phones are becoming more like regular computers (horsepower wise) and netbooks are becoming more like phones. All these trends are changing our model of personal computing. This is what Chrome OS is.

13:17 EST — With Chrome OS, Google is focused on speed, simplicity and security. Needs to be blazingly fast, like an appliance – ready to use from turn-on. End-to-end experience, including boot time, will be very fast. In Chrome OS, every application is a web application – no installation, no updates, just a URL. This reduces the lack-of-familiarity encountered by new users. All data will be in the cloud (DR: hmmm, not sure how I feel about this). This will include all personalization, applications, data.

13:18 EST — With everything being a web application, can do different things with security than is done now. Since no binaries are installed on the system, malicious code can be detected much more easily, and problems can be fixed with a reboot.

13:19 EST — Doing a cold boot right now – 7 seconds to login! Holy cow! Google is still working to reduce this time further. Logging in takes about 3 seconds. It looks like Chrome, the desktop looks like a browser. Now going to do a walkthrough of the UI. This is not fully baked yet, will change over the next year, but everything is now open and many of the concepts shown today will carry over to the final product.

13:21 EST — Running apps are separated into tabs across the top of the screen, just like tabbed browsing. Apps are shown in a tab. Panels can pop up from the bottom of the screen; they’re “persistent lightweight windows” that can be rolled up and down. They hold things like chat windows, contacts, buddy lists, music players etc.

13:25 EST — Showing examples, such as flash-based full-screen chess game, e-book reading (such as from Google Books).

More…

It’s been about 8 weeks since I’ve been out for a bike ride. Today was the last in a stretch of beautiful days, and considering it might be the last really nice bike riding day for a while, I couldn’t pass it up.

Mountain biking as the sun sets is an amazing experience. If you back off the throttle just a touch, you’ll get to watch the woods transform. As you set out, the late-afternoon sun cuts through the empty trees and catches the dust in the air. The squirrels are still out foraging. Any time you stop, it seems like your surroundings are still in motion. But as the sun sets, the breeze calms down and the shafts of light disappear. You can feel the air chill down around you, and watch your breath begin to appear as you ride between ribbons of warmth and pockets of cooler air sliding down the veins and contours of the landscape. You ride hard – you still carve through each turn and you still push yourself up every ascent – but there are certain rides where you just can’t help but take a little extra notice of the surroundings sliding past.

Update 2010-01-15: I’ve noticed a lot of folks finding this post while searching for ways to enable a signature on their Droid / Android phones … It’s as easy as 1-2-3:
1) Open the GMail app
2) Tap the menu key and select “Settings”
3) Tap the “Signature” setting – you will be prompted for your desired sigline!

I’ve had my new Motorola Droid for a little over a week now, and if my experience so far is any indication, spending the next two years with this phone will be a joy. It’s solid, it works beautifully, and so far I haven’t found a single thing it can’t do.

One of the things it can do is add a signature line to emails sent using the phone’s GMail client. And about this, I am conflicted…

Just about anyone who uses e-mail these days has probably received messages from their iPhone-toting friends, happily auto-signed “Sent from my iPhone”. In the digital world, there was a time when this little line of text was as much a status symbol as actually having the iPhone itself, and I’m sure more than a few folks (myself formerly included) promptly dismissed it as yet another way for the narcissistic among us to shout, “Look at me! I have an iPhone!” And yet…

I’ve actually developed a rather healthy appreciation for that little signature. Same goes for “Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry”. It tells me a lot about the message that precedes it – most importantly, that the sender typed it out on a tiny little keyboard with his-or-her thumbs, and that the probable terseness of the message isn’t personal, but merely an artifact of the computing environment from which it originated. Despite the cultural connotation, seeing “Sent from my [whatever]” at the bottom of an e-mail is actually quite useful.

Which brings me to my present conundrum… Should I configure my Droid to auto-sign e-mails? The self-conscious side of me doesn’t want to come across as gloating – because ultimately, being a smartphone user (even if it’s Android-powered!) does not make you special. At all. And anyone who knows me knows I very much dislike calling attention to myself. But on the other hand, I personally find these signatures useful, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who changes my perspective slightly when I read an e-mail that’s sent from someone’s mobile device. Maybe I should borrow my friend Chris’s strategy, and just auto-sign “Sent from Mobile Device”?

If you’re a Droid / iPhone / Blackberry / S60 / WiMo / Tréo / whatever user and you send e-mails from your phone, what’s in your sig line? Do you even use one? Any reason for your decision? Hit up the comment form and let us know…

…if you drive a blue car, since it’s about to look completely fugly:

Yes, friends and neighbors, that’s what we get to put on our cars starting in Spring 2010. Adorably-retro, don’t you think? No? Didn’t think so.

I’m pretty sure humans have a limited capacity for drama before 8 o’clock in the morning, and this morning put my drama tolerance to the test…

With Autumn here and Thanksgiving right around the corner, I’ve been wanting to pick up some baking pumpkins … Pumpkin-themed baked goods are one of my favorite indulgences around this time of year, and I figured this might be a good year to try the fresh stuff, rather than using pumpkin puree of the canned variety. While cruising through town yesterday, I noticed a sign out for our local farmers’ market – and a few minutes later, I had 3 baking pumpkins ready for, well, baking!

Of course, these aren’t just any baking pumpkins… The lady at the farmers’ market warned me – they’re a hard-skinned variety, and rather than dulling down all your cutlery trying to chop them up before baking, it’s better to bake first and ask questions later. “Just poke the skin with a fork to let the steam out,” she advised – and mentioned that 20 minutes in the microwave would also do the trick.

Given the time shortage I mentioned here recently (something about grad school?) I figured the microwave would be the way to go – so at about 7:30 this morning, I perforated one of the pumpkins and sent it into our brand-spanky-new Whirlpool to meet 1000 of James Watt‘s progeny.

I watched the pumpkin carefully. I really did! But after I saw water bubbling out of my freshly-cut vent holes, I figured I was home free on the steam front. I turned my attention to the other two pumpkins, patiently waiting on the kitchen counter, unaware of their fate, when … BANG! … it was the unmistakable sound of an exploding hollow vegetable. Apparently, while I had done a decent-enough job of ventilating the pumpkin’s top, a pocket of steam near its base had blown off a silver-dollar-sized chunk of its tough, thin skin.

Sadly, the pumpkin didn’t survive. But the other two? They went in the oven … very well-perforated.

Being an unapologetic Android fanatic, and a blogger who enthusiastically uses WordPress, and considering I’m under 5 days away from getting my first Android-powered device, I guess it’s only natural that I’d do a little poking around and see if there’s a WordPress app for Android. After all, they support iPhone and Blackberry, right?

Yet despite the secretive-looking protected blog façade at android.wordpress.org, which would tend to imply something’s in the works, there doesn’t seem to be an official WordPress app for Android. Searching the help sections at wordpress.org and wordpress.com reveals little, though there are a couple of third party apps aimed at using the WordPress XML-RPC feature to enable posting from Android devices.

And then, in the midst of watching a UI demo video for the forthcoming Sony Ericsson XPERIA “Rachael” device, which runs Android, I noticed a very official-looking WordPress app in the demo unit’s main menu!

The video from which I grabbed this image isn’t new – it was posted way back in July – so if the app that I’ve highlighted above really is official, they’ve been working on it for a while. That said, it could just be a placeholder, or some manner of concept marketing fluff, or any number of other, not-anywhere-near-official things. Also, if you squint through my selective blurring, you’ll see that “DroidWord” also inhabits this particular menu – and I think most of us will agree that’s pretty far-fetched! But in the case that Sony has given us a brief glimpse of an official WordPress blogging app for Android, I’m hoping its release comes soon – perhaps alongside the release of the first few devices to feature Android 2.0?!