I agree. I was first introduced to Be through a demo CD I picked up at a COMDEX show. The fact that I put it in the CD drive at boot and it picked up every piece of hardware I had was only over shadowed by when I downloaded it from the website and installed it with my w2k OS.
What Linux needs is a strong installation procedure. Eliminate choice for the default installation and detect and install a working driver for everything. Then if the user feels secure enough handling more complex issues allow them to install hardware specific drivers. In my limited experience of Linux installs I've always had the latter.
Also something like Wine needs to be more strongly promoted. Just yesterday I found a clear enough summary of what it does, and that alone was all I needed to get interested! The Linux community is fragmented by nature and all these brand names of the different installs, let alone the additions that you can download. Everyone in the Linux community is doing a kick ass job of coming up with great products, but now its the infighting that's killing it. Not the battle with MS. I think this is an important distinction to make.
I want to see a singular Linux front that is strongly promoted much like we see through Apple, MS, BeOS, etc. Different builds could branch out from there, but if x-user off the street wants to know more about Linux you could send them to a single location. Does that location exist now? I don't know, and that is as bad as not existing at all.
One last thing, I don't think this promotional entity should be fronted by one company (ie. IBM) as it needs to address the needs of the whole community.
I don't think its just installation issues, or market capacity, that plague Linux's popularity. I think the problem is people don't know where to start.
Not that I can wire up a circuit, or that I'm volunteering Slashdot readers, but do you need help assembling the device? I know there's so many times I've been in brainstorms but never been able to follow through because I have just enough knowledge of a technology to be dangerous.
Perhaps if you need help putting this device together someone out there can give you a hand.
Personally, I thought this article was presenting nothing new, or spectacular till I realized what was meant by the summary posted on the main page. What is really interesting about the article is that the JPL group is looking to outside resources to develop its applications.
As a designer I find this very inspiring. To be selected for a project working with those engineers would be a fantastic opportunity. On top of that the JPL gets to recruit new people in a slightly different field which they would have had no previous experience.
Whether or not this device looks good, its still important to maintain a connection with the end-user of the application. Face it, not all engineers have been capable of doing this! Involving the organization with outside organizations such as small business or educational facilities can only be a good thing.
I contacted this manufacturer about its cars, but got a bit of a runaround:
They seem to convert pre-existing cars to electric engines. In their first car, the Dauphine Electric was first created in the 1960s with an Electric Option pack. This makes it ideal for putting new and more efficient batteries in the machine.
Not sure about the new car they're sporting on their website, the Zenn. This is the first time I've visited their website in a couple months.
As for the running around I got, I called them and went to visit their garage but there were no cars there. Turns out they cancelled my appointment after I had already left for the garage because they were getting the cars Road Tested in Windsor, ON for the Canadian Standards. I do know they exist because I've seen them around town a couple times. Hopefully it'll catch on soon.
I used to work for those guys. The Flash site is about 3 years old and has never been updated. They keep telling me they are planning on updating it whenever I talk to them but since it was designed in Flash its really difficult to update.
I wouldn't be too afraid of what Cossette Interactive can do the technical team is strong. They do support ASP and are quite heavy in MS products, but they are openminded. I used to be the only person that promoted the Mozilla project to them. That was always a fight. Don't ask me where they lie now in terms of supporting NS6+ or Moz.
If you ask me that post a couple weeks ago with that web design firm that writes only compliant code is the way to go. Screw writing sniffers for every sub-class of browser. If the client's browser doesn't like the code they should get a browser that supports the standards!
Bookmarklets are also really cool. Essentially they are scripts that you write and can store in the form of a bookmark. Check out this site for details: here
I'm currently using Uptime, Whois, Zoom In/Out, Sort functions, and more all through my Bookmarklets. Terribly useful.
But reading the CNet articles reminds me of why I stopped visiting the site. I don't find it biased, more misinformed. I wish they had done more research prior to posting.
Why don't you just pick up one copy of Flash (MX/5) (I don't know if LiveMotion 2 has this capability) and develop an application that uses objects and libraries to build the policy application. Allow the client to place the objects on the screen and type content into specified areas, then save the information to XML. When the audience queries the information you just read the XML back into the stage and regenerate the information?
This reduces the purchased materials to one copy of the $500 program -- also look for older discounted versions now that MX is out -- keeps the bandwidth low, allows you to control the information from one common database, and keeps your brand throughout the presentations.
Off the top of my head, check out http://www.flashcan.com/cards/ as this uses the same method I'm speaking of. There's lots of other examples of parsing XML. Check out the archives of http://chattyfig.figleaf.com for more in depth ideas on how to do this.
There's screenshots and a review up at http://www.flashmagazine.com/.
As for the usability aspects Flash does allow you to extract all the copy and place it in the HTML file so that it may be searched by things such as Babelfish, but at this point it comes out of context. Designers wanting to fulfill this usability requirement still need to develop in HTML therefore making MX useless.
BTW, what does MX stand for?
Actually, there's a lot of us folders waiting for stuff like this to become available. The one I was interested in was the Paper Phone article here. It could be pretty interesting to apply a printed circuit onto a piece of paper and fold it into various forms, then have the audience interact with the folded piece.
BTW, that Cuckoo Clock was given to my friend for his birthday by Lang. The photo does it no justice. It is a beautiful piece that was one of the few surviving things of a house fire about ten years back.
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What Linux needs is a strong installation procedure. Eliminate choice for the default installation and detect and install a working driver for everything. Then if the user feels secure enough handling more complex issues allow them to install hardware specific drivers. In my limited experience of Linux installs I've always had the latter.
Also something like Wine needs to be more strongly promoted. Just yesterday I found a clear enough summary of what it does, and that alone was all I needed to get interested! The Linux community is fragmented by nature and all these brand names of the different installs, let alone the additions that you can download. Everyone in the Linux community is doing a kick ass job of coming up with great products, but now its the infighting that's killing it. Not the battle with MS. I think this is an important distinction to make.
I want to see a singular Linux front that is strongly promoted much like we see through Apple, MS, BeOS, etc. Different builds could branch out from there, but if x-user off the street wants to know more about Linux you could send them to a single location. Does that location exist now? I don't know, and that is as bad as not existing at all.
One last thing, I don't think this promotional entity should be fronted by one company (ie. IBM) as it needs to address the needs of the whole community.
I don't think its just installation issues, or market capacity, that plague Linux's popularity. I think the problem is people don't know where to start.
Not that I can wire up a circuit, or that I'm volunteering Slashdot readers, but do you need help assembling the device? I know there's so many times I've been in brainstorms but never been able to follow through because I have just enough knowledge of a technology to be dangerous.
Perhaps if you need help putting this device together someone out there can give you a hand.
Personally, I thought this article was presenting nothing new, or spectacular till I realized what was meant by the summary posted on the main page. What is really interesting about the article is that the JPL group is looking to outside resources to develop its applications. As a designer I find this very inspiring. To be selected for a project working with those engineers would be a fantastic opportunity. On top of that the JPL gets to recruit new people in a slightly different field which they would have had no previous experience. Whether or not this device looks good, its still important to maintain a connection with the end-user of the application. Face it, not all engineers have been capable of doing this! Involving the organization with outside organizations such as small business or educational facilities can only be a good thing.
I contacted this manufacturer about its cars, but got a bit of a runaround:
They seem to convert pre-existing cars to electric engines. In their first car, the Dauphine Electric was first created in the 1960s with an Electric Option pack. This makes it ideal for putting new and more efficient batteries in the machine.
Not sure about the new car they're sporting on their website, the Zenn. This is the first time I've visited their website in a couple months.
As for the running around I got, I called them and went to visit their garage but there were no cars there. Turns out they cancelled my appointment after I had already left for the garage because they were getting the cars Road Tested in Windsor, ON for the Canadian Standards. I do know they exist because I've seen them around town a couple times. Hopefully it'll catch on soon.
I used to work for those guys. The Flash site is about 3 years old and has never been updated. They keep telling me they are planning on updating it whenever I talk to them but since it was designed in Flash its really difficult to update.
I wouldn't be too afraid of what Cossette Interactive can do the technical team is strong. They do support ASP and are quite heavy in MS products, but they are openminded. I used to be the only person that promoted the Mozilla project to them. That was always a fight. Don't ask me where they lie now in terms of supporting NS6+ or Moz.
If you ask me that post a couple weeks ago with that web design firm that writes only compliant code is the way to go. Screw writing sniffers for every sub-class of browser. If the client's browser doesn't like the code they should get a browser that supports the standards!
I'm currently using Uptime, Whois, Zoom In/Out, Sort functions, and more all through my Bookmarklets. Terribly useful.
But reading the CNet articles reminds me of why I stopped visiting the site. I don't find it biased, more misinformed. I wish they had done more research prior to posting.
Why don't you just pick up one copy of Flash (MX/5) (I don't know if LiveMotion 2 has this capability) and develop an application that uses objects and libraries to build the policy application. Allow the client to place the objects on the screen and type content into specified areas, then save the information to XML. When the audience queries the information you just read the XML back into the stage and regenerate the information? This reduces the purchased materials to one copy of the $500 program -- also look for older discounted versions now that MX is out -- keeps the bandwidth low, allows you to control the information from one common database, and keeps your brand throughout the presentations. Off the top of my head, check out http://www.flashcan.com/cards/ as this uses the same method I'm speaking of. There's lots of other examples of parsing XML. Check out the archives of http://chattyfig.figleaf.com for more in depth ideas on how to do this.
There's screenshots and a review up at http://www.flashmagazine.com/. As for the usability aspects Flash does allow you to extract all the copy and place it in the HTML file so that it may be searched by things such as Babelfish, but at this point it comes out of context. Designers wanting to fulfill this usability requirement still need to develop in HTML therefore making MX useless. BTW, what does MX stand for?
Just try to insert the CD upside down...
Actually, there's a lot of us folders waiting for stuff like this to become available. The one I was interested in was the Paper Phone article here. It could be pretty interesting to apply a printed circuit onto a piece of paper and fold it into various forms, then have the audience interact with the folded piece.
BTW, that Cuckoo Clock was given to my friend for his birthday by Lang. The photo does it no justice. It is a beautiful piece that was one of the few surviving things of a house fire about ten years back.