Well, by the looks of it the website is back up and running, so I should be able to post another article. Yesterday and the day before something went wrong over at the funny-farm where Knightwise.com was hosted and apparently the collective SQL Database array decided to shit itself and leave us hanging out to dry for about 2 days straight. I'm still in the process of figuring out what in wankers name went on, but things seem to we working ok.

This weekend, one of the first this year, has been spent mostly at home. As the weather outside decided to lay out a setting that would even make the Duracel Bunny depressed, we cuddled up in 'the embassy' (a nice nickname for our home) and have spent the majority of the day in our hobby room upstairs. With Neelix and Nyana sleeping, watching tv and surfing, I have some time to get behind the pc and get some outstanding work done. So far most of my activities have been : Trying to record the next episode of the Knightcast (Trying), Securing one of my remote Linux servers and documenting the whole thing for my school project, cleaning up my massive itunes music collection and listening to some of the "freshly acquired tracks" that I have sorted so elegantly. Its a good thing I have the 24 inch Imac to hide behind otherwise people could quite easily think i'm mad since i'm bopping my head up and down, Senheiser Headphones up and bopping away to the music.

On saturday i sold the last of my G4 macs. The little mac mini I still had ( I had been using it as a Linux server) got adopted for some small ammount of cash by an 11 year old Mac enthusiast who, with this machine, got his first Mac. I installed the machine into perfectiona and bothered to slide a crapload of freeware and open source software on the desktop. This way this little guy won't be bothering his mom for at least some time to come. 

Saturday afternoon my central heating guy came by to install a thermostat downstairs and I had to lend a hand. When he asked me if I had a manual for the boiler in the basement I had to look at him and gently shake my head. His worried expression informed me I did however need one , so Google was my friend. Together we went into the basement, took the Acer laptop with us, checked the model number and found a PDF of the manual on the net. Pretty cool huh :) Halfway in looking over the PDF (we did not of course print it out) the Craftsman and the IT guy were interrupted by the sound of a .. BLACKBERRY ?  And what do you know ! Heating-guy pulls a BLACKBERRY from his pocked and quickly replies to an email. I was stoked ! Quickly afterward the whole situation turns into this techtalk babble between geeks. He's bitching about the buttons on his Pearl being to small, I show him my HTC ! This is my heating guy ! He's more geeky than me ! (when it comes to blackberry anyway). Love it !

Now I have been playing with the idea of getting me a Blackberry. Since i'm on the move quite a bit, a more permanent means to connecting to the internet is becoming apparent. Up to now freeloading of open Wifi was a pretty cool way to get things done, however more and more people secure their wifi networks these days. The dumbo-dumb days are unfortunately over. So I needed a fallback scenario to get on line when I needed to. There is of course the issue of "what do you go online with : Go for a 3G Usb modem and use the Acer Netbook, or use the smartphone with a GPRS connection ? The former is more powerful then the latter, but the latter is more convenient. Its quicker to whip out your cellphone and check your emails or Twitter, then to boot up a complete netbook. So I had been looking at GPRS contracts, 3G contracts and even Blackberry solutions. At 15 euro's a month they don't come cheap and the 100 megabyte data cap is not really smiling in my direction either.. But its worth a look. A Blackberry would form the "instant communication umbilical" between me and my life on the internet. And as much as I look at the possibilities, I also am a little frightened of the whole concept. With Mobistar having a deal on the Blackberry Curve 8320 for a peasy 225 euro's (if you buy it toghether with a blackberry contract) the Blackberry is within my grasp.. But then what ? Will I become one of those "Crackberry addictees" ? or might it be a disappointing experience ? I do know that , having already done my research on the apps I can run on it, the Blackberry would tie me into my web based life pretty smoothly. Syncing the Google calendar, Getting my Gmail on the BB, Contact sync software for the Mac is also out there.. and the list goes on. Portable SSH client, Googletalk, Irc... Tie that together with the fact that the BB 8320 comes with Wifi, a digital camera and a micro sd card .. this could be leaning towards the perfect device for a sweet price  ?

I'm sure you must have been hiding under a full sized meteorite yesterday if somehow the release of Google Chrome went passed you. Who knows you might even be surfing this very page with your brand new shiny browser... Its been all over the web and even on the news (On the "radio thing") they were talking about the one million downloads Chrome had received. But ... what does it mean.

Google Chrome is a sign of the times that the days of "offline computing" are numbered. The very philosophy behind the browser is to offer a rock solid browser you can use when working with web-based applications ( For example : Google Docs , Gmail etc) This way of thinking points out that applications like "google docs" or any other online application are beyond the state of 'a gadget" but are seen as real competitors for off-line programs, thus demanding a stable browser to run them in. The web 2.0 with its web application is, together with a rock solid browser environment, a serious competition for any localy installed application.

As a netbook user, "cloud computing" is a thing I do every day. Gmail, Google Apps for domains, Flickr, My online calendar, Facebook, Meebo and what have you. There is not a lot I cannot do in a browser, so having a stable platform to do it all would certainly be appreciated. Firefox does a great job, but does like to nibble away at my memory once a while. But the fact that I have a lot of extentions to choose from make Firefox one of my favorite browsers.

Would I Use Google Chrome ? 

I have downloaded it, played with it and have given it a good look over. So far its fast, its simple and there is not a lot I really hate about it. But thats about it. Its still very new and very fresh. For one : We don"t know the security risks yet (it has only been "out there" for a day) and it does not offer me the fancy extensions that Firefox does. So I don't see it as a browser, I see Chrome as a "platform" to my Google environment (like Adobe Air is a platform for some applications) Why only the Google side of my life ? Well because they KNOW everything about me there anyway. But to go out and surf the web on a Google browser.. hmm.. I don't know if I want to do that (I never let Google tie my searches to my account data) I"m not sure what the privacy policy is in Chrome, but I'll pass for now.

So in the end.

Google Chrome to me, is another competitor for IE, offering a stable alternative to access web based content. It is a lightweight competitor for Firefox for those who don't use a lot of extentions. In all ? its something new. Beware it DOES come from the "big bad google" and we are giving away another snippet of our privacy .. But we all knew privacy died years ago.

You can call me many things, but one of the things you are surely going to mention is "early adopter". Yes, I am one of those cyber pioneers thats gets his hands on the new toys out there and who boldly swipes his Visa through the magnetic card reader and goes for the purchase of a brandnew and unproven product just because its new. Never mind the prices will drop in a few weeks, never mind the risk its total and utter crap, never mind the early bugs .. Everything dwindles into nothingness in comparison to the sheer moments of glory where we pull out our brand new toy and bathe in ghasps of surprised onlookers.

With the whole "netbook" thing, I have been no different. An early adopter. Could not wait for the Asus EEEpc to come to Europe and managed to get it shipped in from the states. Darn cool thing. But after owning it for a few months (and loving it) it was time for something new. Prices drop ( so you can"t hold on to your gadget for too long ) and new stuff comes around the corner. So I sold off my Asus EEEpc and went for the new Acer Aspire One.

The Acer.

Wasn"t that a shitty kind of brand ?  True, I've owned an acer a few years ago and was far from pleased. Acer is pretty cheap but low in quality and they just make crap-in-a-box mostly. Especially their low end laptops are overweight, have crappy finishing and die of fright once you pop them in a laptop bag to carry them around. But I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and go for a model that was light enough to carry its own weight. And for 300 euro"s it was a pretty spiffy thing. 

Specs.

You can find out the exact technical specs about the product here . What however convinced me for going for the Acer Aspire One and not for the Asus 901 is the fact that its ever so slightly bigger. ''The One" is about a centimeter wider then the Asus 900 but its keys are 9/10th the size of regular laptop keys. To me : This means a world of difference. Where the Asus 701 was an ultra portable, ideal for dragging with you everywhere , offering the pleasures of mobility.. It wasn't realy a productive machine in the sense that it took quite a lot of getting used to when you wanted to type something. With the Acer Aspire One the keyboard is slightly larger. This turns the device from a "gadget-like ultra small computer" (like Toshiba's Libretto : Cool but unpractical) to a supersmall "laptop" when it comes down to productivity, elevating this 300 euro device to level of its 1400 euro counterparts who form the super small ultrapowerfull range of laptops, offered by several brands.  Very true, with the 8 gig solid state hard drive its not going to be a monster when it comes to storage and preformance, but on a laptop of that size, you don't NEED that either. The liberty of portability combined with the decent size keyboard make this a very very interesting gadget.  Furthermore the "One" has , aside from 3 usb slots, 2 card readers. Thus overcoming the idea of a small hard drive storage capability by being able to add an SD card. Not super fast, but super small and super cheap. Where the Asus 901 also offers this feature, the kicker with the aspire one is it also has ANOTHER 5 in one SD cardreader. This adds creative juices to the heap, where you can import the pictures from your camera, process them, but no longer be held back by limited disk space since you can hurl them over to the other SD card or a connect usb mass storage device. 

Furthermore there is of course an Ethernet port, Wireless lan (pretty good coverage) Webcam (hello !) Built in speakers and and headphone / external microphone connector. The downside is the touch pad which has  (for some strange reason) the buttons alongside of it instead of underneath it. This makes right-clicking a very unnatural experience and this is definitely one of the downsides of the laptop. Battery life is fairly good (depends on what you do with it) The machine plays decent video (Vlc + external harddisk + divx = Portable Private Porno Pad ) and the audio is not bad either. The DOWNside is that they had to insert a fan into the device. This little addition is just somewhat noisy and I find that annoying.   The general feel of the device is slightly "plasticky" Is it because the device is lighter then the Asus 701 or is it because its slightly bigger , it doesn't feel as sturdy and would have me freaked out if I accidently dropped it. (Did this with the Asus 701 , Asus was fine).

As for software : The device came with a highly customized version of Linux, and that surprised me. ( The Asus was only shipped with XP here in Belgium) After running the customization wizard ( that thinks BELGIAM is a country) I got a clean looking interface, written for the mentally challenged, computer illiterate or people who just need to surf and do email. The manual that comes with it is very good, and to be frank, an average internet-only user will do very well with this device, just out of the box.. But i'm no average user.

Dual booting the sucker.

When I tried to think about what I wanted to do with the device, Running Linux came to mind right away. No problems there : I wanted to run Ubuntu on it and by golly, you can do that. I just Googled around , followed the steps on how to do it and ended up with a nice working laptop ! Even the Netbook Remix worked and looked very very fine ! However since I had 8 gigabytes of ram I wanted to play a different ballgame. So I cut up the harddrive in two partitions and installed XP on one partition and Ubuntu on the other one. With an SD card of 4 gigabytes I could use for storage it would not be such a bad thing if the internal HD was filling up.  Installing XP did ask for some creative thinking. I slipstreamed SP3 into a version of XP that I had and threw out ALL the rest just to have an XP edition that is as small as possible, extra crap like minesweeper and stuff was discarded. But in all XP still munches up 3 gigabytes (!) of data these days. Too darn much if you ask me. But still. This being a netbook I rely on the cloud to provide me with applications. A vlc mediaplayer, firefox,  and Abiword, together with a virusscanner was all I used.  Googleapps, Meebo, Twitter.. Whatever you could find in the cloud, I did not need to install. Ubuntu does not take up that much space so I was able to install the standard Ubuntu installation and some extra'"s (and still had some room to spare). 

At the end of the road. 

With this being my second "ultraportable" I can realy feel the evolution of technology in these devices. For me the Acer Aspire One is now no longer a "subnotebook" but quite a diverse device that can enable me to do a great amount of things. It broke free of the childhood limitations of the 701 by offering me a bigger screen, bigger keys and more options for internal and external storage. But in doing this it did not brake the boundries of price or size. Perhaps not as sturdy as the Asus counterpart , the Acer Aspire One is surely a worthy competitor.

Links : 

The Acer aspire One website.

Howto run Ubuntu Linux on the Acer Aspire One.

Tweak your XP using Nlite.

There are two sides. Either you Love "Da Google" or you hate "Da Google". Some people trust Sergei and his friend implicitly , some people don"t. And I must say: I'm one of the former ones. I have been using Google and Gmail for over three years now, and so far I am loving it. Over the last five years i've been down quite a path when it comes to Email solutions. When I just had one computer , it was not really a problem, but once we had several computers the whole POP3 email solution just did not do it for me anymore. So I have tried several things. I setup my own SBS server, Pop3'ing my emails INTO the exchange server and accessing them using Outlook or via Webmail. That worked pretty fine. But the trail version I had of SBS expired (read : i could not find a working crack ) and I had to go and look for other solutions. That's when I found FIRSTCLASS. A free email server (with the ability to pop3 email INTO the server , just like exchange) and access it via a client or via the web. AND there was a client for both Mac , Windows and Linux computers ! Worked all fine and dandy but .. you had to have your own server running. 

At some point, I don't know where I decided to pull down our Firstclass server and look for another groupwise-email solution for Nyana and me. ( I think one of the reasons was that the Firstclass mailserver had two old scsi drives that made and insane amount of noise ) So that's when I turned to Gmail. I let go of the whole 'hosting your own server' and put my faith in the hands of the guyz at G. 

And so far that has been going great . For the last three years every email that we sent back and forth went into our Gmail account and got archived. Whenever we needed something , we searched and found. Once the whole IMAP thing got started we moved to open source clients on the different operating systems , or accessed the system using Gmail. Calendar sharing and chat came soon after that , so for the last 2 years we have been heavily "Google-ized".

Do I mind that Google gives me little adds on the side ? To be quite frank, I hardly noticed them and have never clicked on one. Do I mind Google "reads my email" .. not realy . They don't give me spam. As a matter of fact, they offer me the best spamfilter I've seen in quite some time.

So this week I took it one step further and activated "Google apps for domains" . Its a free service by Google and what it eventually does is that Google now becomes your email provider (instead of just using one mailbox , all the mail gets sent to Gmail) Once you have it setup you get to play "administrator" for your own Google-domain.  So you can setup mailaccounts for you and your family, (all with an @yourdomain.com domain name) , get to play with shared calendars , Google Sites , Google chat etc etc .. and its all for free. 

Technically it takes a bit of reading to get it all setup (just follow the steps at www.google.com/a ) and make sure you are in touch with your hosting company that hosts your domain  (cause you have to change some Cname and MX dns records) but once that that is done , you are up and running. So far I've setup our mailaccounts, shared calendars, contacts and so forth. There is nothing realy NEW about the whole setup , but this way I can easily make new mail accounts and make sure that the outgoing addresses that gmail sends out are @mydomain.com instead of " on behalf of @mydomain.com, from @gmail.com" as it is when u use a regular gmail account with additional sender addresses.

Conclusion ? Instead of having my own flaky mailserver slurping away power at home, I now rely on google's infrastructure, the chance that all severn (!) of their MX servers go down is slightly smaller then the chance this could happen to my own server. Ok , i've " handed off" the real email collaboration to another company but hey ! Its for free, its stable and it lets tech work for you.