Links for the end of October

I am bit swamped these days, and you must have noticed it by now. These things happen: lots of work items, lots of backlog, and lots of exhaustion as well. Since I don’t want to leave this blog « unattended » for even 2 or three weeks, I am posting today some links I find interesting to visit. Enjoy! I’ll be back soon, by the way…

• Microsoft releases Windows Azure. But what is it really? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. It seems it’s a server platform tailored for cloud computing environment. And what is cloud computing? I’m still figuring it out… Seriously, Cloud Computing is the up and coming state-of-the-art in IT. The idea is to use and benefit from data, applications, and networks that are hosted not on your desktop, and not on a server near you. In fact, data and applications are always available but out there, on the Network, in the cloud. Of course, it sounds simple, but it’s very, very complex. It’s a true shift of paradigm, a copernician revolution asking as many questions that it answers, from data portability and users’ rights to virtualized environment and application frameworks. And that’s where players such as Amazon, Joyent and Google are striving. And of course, Microsoft wants to be the dominant player there. So it released a nifty platform that is both a server for running distributed applications and hosting data, and a Microsoft’s Live set of Services. That’s where it’s not clear. They say everything works on Azure, but it seems you better want to use their stuff first. Just like the others, it will work, but… better.

• Do you remember the nice subway map picturing the trends of web sites and online services? Well, that map was for 2007. But there’s the new one I completely missed. Enjoy…

• There you go. Firefox 3 with the newest javascript engine, and all of a sudden, it actually becomes a fast browser on the Mac! Try Minefield, it’s a surprisingly stable development version of Firefox 3 with a different javascript engine.

• Food for thought: I share with them the conviction that large corporation are dwarfing most governments these days. I am no pessimist though: those very same governments could very well come back if they were willing to. But most of them seem to be ideologically blinded, and that’s a pity. Meanwhile, feel free to adhere. It comes from Europe, and it’s free…

• Pondering Boycott Novell must be a funny thing to do. But what’s the problem? The news web site is accused by some to be a troll machine, while some others worship it. My view on this is simple: I’m a reader of this web site, and whenever I was involved in some specific situations or was having some solid information on them, I was able to read accurate reports on these. That’s the about the most honest answer I can make. Roy is a good guy, he’s actually taking out the meat and lay it on the table. Should he be doing it in a different fashion, with more style and less passion? Perhaps. Meanwhile, I have more fun reading his prose than the one Mr Byfield regales us with along with his paternalistic advices on why we, the community of freetards & beardies, should learn from big businesses.

• People are getting busy preparing the OooCon 2008 in Beijing; for our Asian community, the location makes it an obvious point of focus. But this illustrates how OpenOffice.org has become an international community of choice. Good luck with the conference! And see you next year, OOoCon.

• News without a link: OpenOffice.org 2.4.2, the last maintenance release of the 2.x branch, is about to be uploaded. If you don’t want to use the 3.0 (some organization needs time before fully qualifying new versions of office suite), that one is for you. Stay tuned.

• News without a link continued: the ISO 26300 (aka ODF 1.0) gets an errata, and you’re welcome to comment on it for the next 15 days. No big news, here again, it’s all about maintenance…