Technology – Page 104

Finally! On Yahoo! Mail, and Not Beta

My account on Yahoo! Mail was finally switched from the Beta version to the final release. The announcement was made around the end of August, but my server just got converted to the new release yesterday. The rollout is being done slowly, farm by farm so that troubles can be sorted out, if they occur. After all, Yahoo! does have 250 million users to cater to, according to comScore.

Not much has changed, except for the fact that some icons used have a new feel. The built-in messenger now supports interconnection with Windows Live Messenger too, a feature earlier found only in the desktop version and the online version of Yahoo! Messenger. It did mean I was swamped by a lot of add requests though.

Also, as they’d said, now you can send free SMSes directly from the Yahoo! Mail interface, which shows handy little icons for any type of message in its compose window. You can switch to a different type now while working on something.

Another new feature that has been added is Yahoo! Shortcuts for Mail. What this does is that it automatically creates links for various things like addresses, keywords, place etc, and allows you to do tasks quicly with them. For example, if an address is written in a mail, it’ll link that to its map on Yahoo! Maps; or link a keyword like ‘India’ to a search. You can choose to turn this feature off, or choose the categories in which you want to see these shortcuts by going to you mail options page.

And I heard Prashanth’s FINALLY admitted that Yahoo! Mail IS better than Gmail. One convert done today, check…

Sue With GPL + Need Reasons To Hate Linux

I came across some real good stuff on Yahoo! News today. First, was something I’d already read about and which is a milestone in the free (as in speech, not beer) software world. The first ever lawsuit was filed for violating the GPL, and then a scared company decided to settle it out of court. I sure did get some publicity for the GPL, and sent a message across that the GPL is NOT something mess around and get away with – a message that I’m sure the Free Software Foundation wanted to send out months after the launch of GPL v3.

However, the more interesting article was on 7 reasons to hate Linux. Well, ok, note hate actually; but stinging though the criticism (and unfair, IMHO) might be, this guy HAS made some valid points. However, what I must say is that the people reviewing Linux for professional magazines bay for blood whenever something goes wrong, but if everything DOES go right (which is most of the time), then they make it ‘the usual Yada Yada stuff’.

Then there’s Walt Mossberg, who’s the biggest moron I’ve ever come across, because he clearly doesn’t know forty two pixels about Linux, and yet, ‘reviews’ stuff. Here’s an excerpt from his review of Ubuntu:

When I tried to play common audio and video files, such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download special files called codecs that are built into Windows and Mac computers. I was warned that some of these codecs might be “bad” or “ugly.”

I guess he didn’t even bother to check the third part of the Gstreamer package (the ‘codecs’ he was referring to) was named ‘good’. ‘Good’, ‘Bad’, or ‘Ugly’ is what the Gstreamer package comes in, but it doesn’t refer to the quality of the package at all! It’s supposed to be a joke, by naming the parts after the 1966 Sergio Leone movie The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.

So yes, I agree with that guy on Yahoo! News – he does have some stuff that the open source community needs to take note of. However, the power to influence, and influence most novice users is something that these ‘reviewers’ should be aware of; and they MUST do proper research before making any adverse comments. Just this of it – Mossberg would immediately have noticed the joke had he paid any attention to the other package name. Or maybe, he doesn’t watch movies…