In short, I read the following item, which I believe is old news despite the datestamp:

The world’s largest maker of personal computers, Dell, has reported a fall in third-quarter profits after taking a charge to repair faulty parts.

Putting two and two together, the following item on bad Intel capacitors got Slashdotted a short while ago:

At issue are faulty capacitors on motherboards that store power and regulate voltage. Defective capacitors found in the Dell Optiplex workstations, some Apple iMac G5s, HP xw-series workstations made in 2004 and PCs with the Intel D865GBF motherboard have been found to bulge, pop, leak and crust over, causing video failure and periodic system shutdowns.

I have recently discovered a UK shop that sells laptops without an operating system (i.e. without Windows) and offers many AMD options too. Thus, they are entitled to have a link.

Related link: Linux on the laptop

Encouraging news to Open Source advocates have been published today.

Firstly, OpenDocument (a la OpenOffice) attracts further interest, much as in the Massachusetts case, which stirred similar interest elsewhere:

Big guns in the software industry are massing behind OpenDocument as government customers show more interest in open-source alternatives to Microsoft’s desktop software.

Secondly, IBM, Sony and Philips sidle closer to Linux:

Three of the world’s biggest electronics companies — IBM, Sony and Philips — have joined forces with the two largest Linux software distributors to create a company for sharing Linux patents, royalty-free.

Well, somebody’s happy!

A sign that is sure to get people’s attention

ATHER common these are aptly-orchestrated campaigns that attract media attention and stir talks among people. It is a form of free advertisement, which benefits from people’s willingness to propagate a message.

Take this code debugging project for example. They offer beer, they offer a trip to Roumania (timely due to Halloween) and finally they receive a free advert on Slashdot and free labour to test their program. Slashdot editors, among others, fell for it…

The winning formula:

• Set up a contest
• Make the reward interesting
• 1^st prize: Get free ads
• Invite just the ‘talented’ few
• Users test program
• Hacks found and fixed
• 2^nd prize: Profit

Jeff Veen explains why the idea of invites is similar. WordPress.com takes this approach when accumulating users for a new Web service, possibly following the tactics of Google Mail. This also may prevent misuse and bad activity as I previously explained. From a commercial point-of-view, it is a disguised form of playing hard to get, though there true intentions behind it, namely quality assurance (e.g. misuse of 2 GB mail account for MP3 sharing and storage) and reliable moderation, e.g. spam flagging in Akismet, which can be tricky.

AST year I praised a habit of posting short blog items which address the main point and then end it. I have come to realise that my blog items are becoming quite long. I get carried away and feel guilty to have pages with little content that makes them unhelpful.

I promise to change that bad habit of mine whenever the story permits it. From now on I will attempt to ensure all posts are fairly short. Pictures are worth a thousand words and I hope they can complement brief sequences of text.

Firefox Web Developer extension (click to enlarge)

OME time in the past I mentioned my ‘Firefox essentials’ and a variety of Firefox toolbars. As it has been many months since then, I would like to list extensions and hacks which I am still pleased with.

• CSS-based ads blocker – get rid of nasty advertisements (even the ones that sometimes appear in my site)
• Mouse Gestures (particularly from Optimoz) – browse using your hand motion
• Flashblock – block Flash and permit its invocation using mouseclicks
• Googlebar – better in many respects than the Google Toolbar
• SearchStatus – highlight rel="nofollow" links in red; display PageRank and Alexa rank in the status bar; check for inclusion in the Google Directory and DMOZ
• Web Developer – the ultimate designer/debugger extension (see picture at top)
• Netcraft Toolbar – detailed and rather technical site information
• AdSense Notifier – little notifier for accumulated earnings – updated merely at real-time in the status bar

Redundant extensions that I no longer use or have disabled over time:

• FlashGot – mass downloads (can use wget instead)
• SpellBound – spellchecker in textareas (does not work consistently)
• PRGoogleBar – Googlebar with PageRank (Googlebar has evolved more though)
• Live HTTP Headers – if you are curious or develop for the Web and delve into headers-level
• A9 Toolbar – good for boosting your Alexa rank (via history log)

Bill is still determined to win

The following item was published just half an hour ago. It speaks of a memo from Bill Gates, which reflects on fear from the Web giants.

SEATTLE – The technology industry shift’s to Internet-based software and services represents a massive and disruptive “sea change,” Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates wrote to top-level executives in a memo aimed at rallying his troops against the new competitive threats the company faces.

Gates compares the push toward such services — which range from online business software offerings to free Web-based e-mail — to the changes he saw nearly a decade ago. Then, he wrote a now-famous memo, called “The Internet Tidal Wave,” the (sic.) prompted a massive shift at Microsoft toward Internet-based technology.

This is closely related to an article from CNN on AJAX and its effect on Windows. A few days ago Gates announced the creation of Internet-based Office and prematurely unveiled live.com.

Yesterday I discovered a user-friendly AJAX development environment called Morfik. It resembles Visual Basic in terms of productivity, I’m informed. Will Web applications soon be constructed as easily and rapidly as desktop-based applications. If so, will Morfik, the sponsor of the recent Web 2.0 conference, take a strong lead? Let us remember that Web applications require no installation, to name just one among the distinguishable traits. This makes them easy to market and promote.

OUSE gestures are the means for commanding actions using movement of the mouse. The user, for example, could jiggle the mouse and/or use combinations of mouseclicks to flip from one Web page to another or insert a piece of commonly-used text such as an E-mail signature. More usefully, programs can be opened by drawing letters and numbers that menmonically characterise them.

There are free software packages for enabling mouse gestures, all of which are rather light-weight:

Linux: WayV – Supports text commands, e.g. quick insertion of names, frequently-used Web site addresses, form filling, etc. WayV supports binding to either a mouse key or a mouse combination with keyboard triggers such as SHIFT or ALT, which avoid collisions. There is no front-end for configuration of actions and gestures, yet (as of 2001).

Windows: StrokeIt – A graphical interface for configuring mouse gestures, which supports plenty of actions. A clear distance is taken from the command-line approach (as in WayV), so there is good abstraction which helps any beginner. The application, however, does not look very modern. It is said to be the ‘standard’ mouse gesture application for Windows users nonetheless.

Note that both Windows and Linux applications don’t appear to have been maintained (nor extended) for a very long time. Regardless, they still are compatible with modern desktop environments.

Firefox (cross-platform): Optimoz – One extension which I personally consider to be a Firefox essential is the Optimoz Mouse Gestures extension. It is only one among several mouse gestures extensions, of which I tried a few. Opera includes mouse gestures ‘out of the box’ and is apparently the root of browser mouse gestures.

Alternative: Keyboard accelerators – Keyboard shortcut keys (for Linux/Windows) can be quick provided that the user gets the mouse and keyboard positioning right and has memorised the key-to-program assignments. Keyboard accelerators are only one among several methods for invoking programs.

All in all, I still find use of the keyboard accelerators to be faster then mouse gestures. This is also a matter of habit.