Infogami seems to be another online web page creator. It’s another YCombinator startup (obligatory reference to Paul Graham, Reddit, Web 2.0, so forth), and it sounds like it’s merged with Reddit.
Exactly why the merge with Reddit is such a good thing, I’m not sure, but I’m interested to find out more.
It’s an interesting product; I imagine that it will be used. I have an infogami page (albeit a minimal one) set up, just to check it out. It’s easy and intuitive, given that it’s free I don’t see why people wouldn’t use it… unless they object to the Google Ads, but given that Infogami needs to eat, too, I don’t think we can begrudge them that. ;-)
I’m still wondering why? I mean, why now? “Blogs” are the buzzword, and we have both Google and an independent startup coming out with products to create simple, ordinary web pages. It’s a good idea, I think. I imagine that this may attract some folks who do want a web presence, but aren’t interested in writing something new every day. If nothing else, it will be an interesting trend to watch.
It seems Google pages is expanding the beta somewhat; I tried to log in today, and lo and behold, I was able to create a Google page.
It’s a very intuitive interface, with lots of options; it’s WYSIWYG, but you have the option (thankfully) to edit the HTML.
I want to raise the question that chagrined companies everywhere are probably asking. Why is it that we (techies in general) scoffed and derided web mail in favor of popmail clients… until Gmail? Why are those who scorn WYSIWYG html editors (at least, I do; sorry) ready to favorably look upon a WYSIWYG html editor that Google made?
Why is it, you may ask, that Google can do no wrong? Why are the Google versions of products a success when other versions of the same sort of projects failed? (I’m speaking in broad generalizations, here.)
That’s a good question. It can probably be partly answered by saying “Google did it better than it had been done before,” which is a matter of opinion, but probably one that is widely held. It may be the ineffable aura of cool that still seems to be following Google wherever they go. It might be because many still see Google as being just a couple of geeks who made it big — really, really, big — and that we somehow just want to see Google succeed. Who knows?
Unanswerable questions put aside… it’s a cool toy. And free web space is nothing to complain about either, even if it is just 100MB. If you haven’t already, check it out.
Not to overwhelm Monday with Linux posts, but I was tipped off this weekend by a reader in Hungary (thanks!) to the existence of Frugalware Linux.
It sounds like Frugalware is based on Arch Linux. (Correction: Frugalware is not Arch Linux “based”, I spoke too soon. It does use Arch’s package management tool and some of its packages; which still sounds like a good idea to me.) This is one I will be trying out soon.
Gentoo Linux 2006.0 has been released; sounds like a very interesting new release.
Major highlights in the release include KDE 3.4.3, GNOME 2.12.2, XFCE 4.2.2, GCC 3.4.4 and a 2.6.15 kernel. This is also the first release with the Gentoo Linux Installer officially debuting on the x86 LiveCD, which will fully replace the Universal and PackageCD set. The LiveCD also features a fully-fledged Gnome environment.
The most interesting feature to me is the mention of the debut of the Gentoo Linux Installer — I am assuming that this is the graphical installer that we first heard about almost two years ago, or so. It was a fairly controversial decision, since the standard Gentoo method was a complex walkthrough of what amounts to a highly scripted “from scratch” Linux install. This might sound difficult or intimidating (and it could be), but it was made to work by the exceedingly high quality of both the packages, the scripts (portage, etc), and the documentation. If you try to find the discussions from the times this first came up, you’ll see a lot of “you’ll pry my Gentoo Installation handbook from my cold dead hands” type of posts.
Really, though, there’s no reason that the Gentoo installation couldn’t be hidden behind a graphical layer. I expect you can still opt for the normal install, but it’s nice to have a choice.
Not too much to write on today, so I’ll muse on Linux.
I pretty much take it for granted now that I’ll run Linux as my primary OS — at least, until I decide to buy a Macintosh, at which point I still expect to have a Linux machine or two in use pretty much constantly around the house. It’s not to prove a point, or because I’m anti-Microsoft (I’m actually writing this from Windows, for once); I’ve just gotten so used to using it, learned so much about it, and more or less come to depend on a lot of the software that runs on Linux.
I’ve grown attached to my bash prompt, and frequently get frustrated in the Windows command environment, doing things like typing “ls” by accident (I do that nearly every time). I prefer GNOME over the Windows GUI by several hundred percent, and not only because of the themeability and customization available — though that’s nice, too. (I know you can “theme” Windows XP as well — but the Windows theming tools (ThemeXP, et al) are resource hogs, and most of the themes are just plain ugly (IMHO, sorry if you differ).)
But this is not a Linux marketing piece; it’s more of a lament. For someone who considers Linux his primary desktop environment, I’m in a strange place.
I’m between distros.
Continue reading ‘In Search of the Perfect Linux’
It looks like the beta is temporarily closed (already), so the About Google Page Creator page will have to sate our curiousity for all things Google for the time being.
Yes. I just felt like sharing that.
It was pretty trivial to reinstall Gentoo, so since I haven’t invested too much time in it yet, I believe I’ll take this opportunity to test out Fedora, see how the latest greatest version is doing. Maybe Suse/Novell Linux would be interesting, too. Shoot, now I need to choose.
We had an interesting occurrence here today; big fat network problems. Not everywhere, though — oh no, that would be too simple.
No, it turns out that the only department affected was… I.T.
Continue reading ‘We’re a little low on subnet fluid. Oh, and the firewall is out of gear.’
Thoughts after reading Princeton professor foresees computer science revolution;
This is a thought-provoking piece, even being as short as it is. Chazelle suggests that computing may still end up as disruptive as quantum mechanics, which is hard for me to imagine — but that only makes the statement more interesting. Neils Bohr once said, “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it,” which I think is a fair statement. It’s difficult to imagine making the same statement about computer science, but there you have it. Computer science; shocking? No, it’s not the first adjective to come to mind; then again, that depends on your point of view.
Continue reading ‘The Computer Science Revolution’
From The Old New Thing, Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar? is pretty interesting. If you use windows at work or home, this is not a bad tidbit to know.
