Some of you have possibly heard about the Nokia 770. For those who haven’t, have a look at this snippet from a recent review in the Washington Post.

The Finnish mobile firm had originally expected the Tablet, which runs on Linux-based software, to enter the market before the end of September.

I personally use a Palm handheld and I consider myself an avid Palm enthusiast. Yet, I was deeply disappointed by the move which had a Treo run Pocket PC. To me, this was beyond a simple “deal with the devil” as I also use Linux and I can imagine the implications of such a dangerous pact. Palm were committed to Linux for quite some time, but were recently taken over by a Japanese giant, so the future is uncertain and past promises or planned strategies should now be taken with a grain of salt.

I started to explore alternative paths and the Nokia 770 is one of these. I have just been reminded that it would not be surprising if Nokia dumped that rusty Symbian altogether and implemented a port of the existing GUI to run on top of the Linux kernel.

From recent articles about the Nokia 770, it sure seems as if the codebase will be made available for other devices as well. I believe the device will be ready by Christmas, so expect a homebred Linux distribution for mobile devices soon. It can then be sold to other vendors which will mark yet another revolution — the entry of Linux into the mobile phones, handheld PDA‘s, tablets, etc. First the servers, then the desktop and soon a penguin in everyone’s pocket, Palm included perhaps.

More on Linux-powered PDA’s:

• The Linux PDA Showcase
• The rather pricy PMA-400
• A cheaper PIM alternative
• Linux Pocket-sized Console

The remainder of this item slides off the theme of Linux and discusses Web 2.0-like transitions.

How come nobody has implemented a portable PDA synchronisation method? Many PDA’s these days can establish an Internet connection and very many computers reside in a connected environment with always-on connection. Would it not be rational to implement a Web-based Palm Desktop, for example? One which centalises data in on-line accounts? I still wait for a handheld that integrates with and synchronises with all platforms more seamlessly. The Internet, being open, can easily bridge that gap and assist users from the fuller spectrum of operating systems. Sooner or later, this all will happen.

Cited by: PalmAddict

Only weeks after Massachusetts decided to ditch Microsoft Office, Open Office 2 is officially announced and released to the public. This version of Open Office has been claimed by some to be faster and superior to Microsoft Office. Most importantly, it adheres to OASIS, it is inter-operable, and free.

As Computerworld puts it:

The OpenOffice.org Project on Thursday released OpenOffice.org 2.0, adding new features that the group claim will resonate with users from business and governments right down to the home desktop. The product will be simultaneously released for a range of operating systems including Linux and Microsoft Windows.

An interesting nugget of information is this: the main ‘sponsors’ of Open Office, namely Sun Microsystems, have recently formed a pact with Google. This fact on its own right can lead to endless speculations, yet Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, recently denied some baseless rumour that Google aim to implement a Web-based Office suite.

Would Google possibly opt to improve and fund Open Office? Any prospects for ownership and integration with the Web? It is no secret that Linux-loving Google are involved in a heavy battle with Microsoft these days. Simply put, it is a “winner takes all” situation.

The number of sites with PageRank 10 is tiny when compared to the number of sites with PageRank 0. Conversely, traffic is largely centralised in sites with a high PR (more details)

little tour around Google has led me to a questionably out-of-date article from the Register. This Article is 2 years old, but it seems more true than ever these days because scraping and link-related spam/attacks are constantly on the rise.

Google has made no secret of its goal to “understand” the web, an acknowledgement that its current brute-force text index produces search results with little or no context. The popularity of Teoma demonstrates that even a small index can produce superior results for certain kind of searches. Teoma leans on existing classification systems.

While Google relied on PageRankâ„¢ to provide context, all was well. But PageRank is now widely acknowledged to be broken, so new, smarter tricks are required.

Regarded as heresy when we raised the issue last spring, now some of Google’s warmest admirers, MetaFilter’s Matt Haughey and web designer Jason Kottke have acknowledged the problem.

As Gary Stock noted here last May, Google “didn’t foresee a tightly-bound body of wirers. They presumed that technicians at USC would link to the best papers from MIT, to the best local sites from a land trust or a river study – rather than a clique, a small group of people writing about each other constantly. They obviously bump the rankings system in a way for which it wasn’t prepared.”

The intersting fact is that Google themselves acknowledge the problem and I am sure difficulties have intensified, if anything, in the past 2 years. The specific reference to bloggers proves that very point as a new blog is set up every second these days.

Regarding the point about pages being indexed rather than learned from or understood, that is one of the catalysts that led me to starting Iuron. That site has attracted tremendous levels of interest since the idea had been conceived on the night on October 9^th. I set up the Web site and made an official announcement the following day. Yesterday I finished a 1-page formal proposal and I contacted the person who is perceived by some as the father of the Semantic Web. He was once my lecturer.

Referrer spam count in October logs (click image to see it full-sized)

OME decent-scale DoS attacks, carried out by hijacked Windows workstations, have returned to the site. This comes after presistent attempts to take down the server, spamming it with URL‘s in the process.

This recent wave of attacks is one which can better be coped with due to experience acquired the last time. Sadly, I suspect that the attackers, whoever they may be, are reading my outcries in the blog and are getting a real kick out of it. Therefore, this will probably be my last post on the topic, however compelling the need to mention it becomes.

Windows XP in AJAX

F Windows is ever to be used, it should be standards-compliant and perhaps, just perhaps, CSS-based. Have a look at the link. It’s worthwhile, I promise you. Try clicking the “Start” button, then navigating through the menus.

That site is an invaluable resource by all means. 5 years down the line when dual-boot no longer is a necessity to most, we will still be able to recall the days when a different operating system prevailed in this world. Since it’s Web-based, no bytes will be consumed on local storage either.

Area 51 – used to be kept secret

T was rather interesting to discover that high-resolution aerial footage of Area 51 had been made available via Google Maps (and its sibling toy — Google Earth). You can review a little ‘photographic summary’ from those who have had a prolonged tour from up above. Do so if you do not wish to explore yourself.

In other news, related items were flagged to for me last night: “Google Satellite Photos Worry India Leader”

The governments of South Korea and Thailand and lawmakers in the Netherlands have expressed similar concerns.

South Korean newspapers said Google Earth provides images of the presidential Blue House and military bases in the country, which remains technically at war with communist North Korea. The North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon is among sites in that country displayed on the service.

UPDATE: I am noticing a similar CNN story, which has just been cited by Slashdot.

“Google takes governmental concerns about Google Earth and Google Maps very seriously. Google welcomes dialogue with governments, and we will be happy to talk to Indian authorities about any concerns they may have,” Frost said in an e-mail statement Saturday.

The command-line is the front line

OT many Linux hosts permit SSH access to one’s own Webspace. There are concerns that the extra freedom and flexibility of the *NIX shell might lead to servers going down. If servers are shared, the problem is somewhat magnified and the threat is just not worth it.

There are, however, workarounds if you use cPanel as I revealed hack. I have also recently been told about PHP Console by its author. That shell can be installed on your Webspace and allow you to do what you otherwise could not.

It is neither the time nor the place to post promotional links, but I am very satisfied with my host that helped me combat the recent zombie attack on 2 of my sites. The attacks have now ended fully and I removed all my defences, namely filtering through re-directions. If you experienced some locational oddities recently, this must have been the cause.