Adobe has recently launched its new open source site, a significant move that reflect the extension of its open source focus. There are several positive effects on this site, particularly users can find a total number of nine (9) projects, with the notable one Flex 3 SDK, as well as the intention to put its applications that support Linux platform. On this site, users will access to available projects, source, documentation, but notice carefully will know that Adobe is demonstrated a strengthened focus on Flex 3 and BlazeDS. Additionally, this site also keep users in touch with some of our favorite bloggers by providing a blogroll on the sidebar of the site.

It should be noted that Adobe’s new open source site will help speed both the Adobe and Linux growth through application support. They definitely trying to improve the existing Adobe Reader and Flash on the Linux distributions.

For users looking for alternative with which to replace Google or YouTube when searching for the Unix or Linux videos, UnixTube seemed to be a fantastic site that fulfill these type of needs. Although the videos appeared on this site are mostly fetched from YouTube, UnixTube presented a golden platform for users when they want to share their favorite Unix/Linux related videos with their friends. Unlike any other video platform, an user do not need to tag the videos in order to make those video more searchable, you come to this site, you’ll roughly know that you could only find Unix/Linux videos here. At this moment, there are not many videos, less than 100 that mostly uploaded by an user called FreeWorm.

However, thus far, this site has not lived up to its full potential as Unix/Linux have both not as popular as Windows or Mac in the end-user market. Users can treat all the videos on UnixTube as tutorial videos, topics such as Fedora installation, run Linux, Zimbra and Samba integration can be found on this site, particularly useful for the Unix/Linux beginners.

via [Digg]

Google’s Android, the open source mobile platform had recently generated a lot of hype following the announced of $10 million for developers that create the best applications for this platform. Though we still do not know which one is the best app for this Android and whom will win the prize, but as far as I read the reviews from people that downloaded the Android SDK, most of them are positive reviews. I think Google know that the number for mobile subscribers are many times more than the Web users. It is a much more important market segment than Web for them as mobile phone can be considered as more personal than a PC or laptop for an individual, especially in the developing economies. They can’t get a better mobile strategy than initiating a project like this Linux-based Android.

If you think that the most important factor that currently driving the evolution of this Android is the $10 million, than it is not true. There are already several third-party developers and companies announced the support for this Android, such as SMobile Systems that said they have created a mobile security solution for this open source platform, and database company like Sybase. It is a good start for Google, if you don’t compare the number of startups that announced their support on OpenSocial, another initiative of Google.

This week, Adobe has released the first version of Flex Builder for Linux operating system. It was a relatively new product concept, install as a plugin version and developers can use it to build the Flex applications on the Linux platform. Right from the beginning, Flex Builder was positioned as a cross platform and open source framework that helped developers to create Web applications. Realizing the difficulty in create the Flex UI (user interface) and due to the fact that the majority number of designers encountered the issues on designer/developer workflow, Adobe also developed another software, i.e. Thermo. It is still in the Adobe labs, and the main differentiator among the different products that Thermo offered is “the ease of use” feature. There are great examples can be found on this Thermo page, as one can easily convert an artwork into a working component and MXML file will be converted, according to this software and this is particularly useful for those who develop the front-end of a Web application.

Without using it before, I have to admit it is far too early to judge how good or how bad these Adobe Flex Builder and Thermo. However, there is a video clip that I found on YouTube may well explained its future prospect, as embedded in the below.

As I visited the LinuxMCE home page, the webmaster said their server got flooded. The mainly reason is the massive traffics that sent to the LinuxMCE when a Digg’s user wrote about it has take the site down, as shown in the picture above. In other word, it mean Digg’s readers is that massive and everyone is fascinated about the LinuxMCE 1.0 release. Moreover, there have been a spike and as a consequence, exceeding the available bandwidth of LinuxMCE’s server. Great news for them as they have just launched in one (1) week time.

LinuxMCE is an open-source feature-rich Ubuntu add-on that offer ten (10) beautiful desktop-like user interface (UI). My first impression is that it’s on par, if not better than the Microsoft Vista UI. It was founded with the aim to compete with the Windows XP Media Center Edition (Windows MCE), a Windows version that designed for the use in media and entertainment areas. LinuxMCE offered three different types of UI, as being discussed in this page, is a complete, stable, easy to use media solution that come with personal video recorder (PVR) and distributed media. I believed it has secured some sort of partnership with MythTV, an organization that focused on the PVR project of Linux versions.

At this moment, I’m still not sure how many of the Ubuntu users have downloaded this LinuxMCE product, but it seems that the huge groups of Linux users are closely watching the progress of this media edition. More than 10,000 readers have accessed to the LinuxMCE Screenshots page since it first prepared on the web on 14th this month.

Kudos to the software development team of LinuxMCE.

Source: http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Image:MainMenuUI2M.jpg

Source: http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Image:MainMenuUI2B.jpg

Source Code for the operating system especially Windows, was extraordinarily valuable. It should be on par, if not better, with the world’s most valuable proprietary recipes, such as the secret formula for making the Coca Cola.

But, source code has not always been kept secret? The answer should be yes way back before Microsoft withhold their source code in order to protect the proprietary operating system, i.e. Windows. I recently came across a website that called Show Us The Code, on the front page, you will read an open letter written to the Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer.

And today is the opening day of the “Show Us The Code Campaign” launched.

Dell Idea Storm, launched by Dell about a week ago, is a site that allowed Dell existing users to write and post their suggestions on the Dell ranges of products. Besides, other users can also vote and comment on the suggestions found on the site. It is a site that utilized the idea of social networking and blog in order to make Dell better.

For this couple of days, the most popular stories found on the site, top three are:
1. Pre-Installed Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Multi-Boot
2. Pre-Installed OpenOffice, alternative to MS Works & MS Office
3. linux laptop,
and the votes received for the above posts are 70419, 42652, and 33037 respectively at this moment.

Meanwhile, I see the impact of open source development is pervasive in Dell’s users. In fact, Linux is identified as number one threat to Microsoft. I have a friend that did not planned to upgrade his PC to Windows Vista and switched to Fedora 6 a few days ago. But until now what really drive Linux still unknown for most of people, I read some said Linux phenomenon today is a culmination of many forces, i.e. technology, culture, and etc. But the interesting questions are: Should Dell listen to its customers and starting to change its product strategies in a open source business model? How would Dell compete with other players such as HP, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo, and etc. if it advocate the open source, non-proprietary software environment?

Adobe just ran an excited news that entitled, “New Release Joins Adobe Flex 2 for Linux-based RIA Creation“. They released the Flash Player 9 and it will enable users to open and read any Flash contents and applications on the Linux platform. According to the aforesaid news, it will also vastly enhances user experiences with new capabilities such as efficient memory utilization, advanced features for graphics, video and text, as well as the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2), which allows up to 10 times faster scripting performance.

I see this year will becoming one of the best years Adobe has had since its first inception in 1982. I read that Adobe has previously released RoboHelp6, and Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh in the beginning of this year. Moreover, they have announced that they going to launch Adobe Production Studio, the integrated video and audio post-production tool set that is part of the Creative Suite family, will be available for both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. In the setting of technology marketing, a growing number of softwares released by a particular company would enabled it to meet the variety needs of the growing number of online and offline consumers and vendors. When a software giant gained a brand name in the market, retailing looked very easy for the company. For example, “How do you sell something that no one have seen or heard before?” This will be a tough question for most of the new start-ups that struggling in everyday. For Adobe, a well-established company in the software sector, as I mentioned above, retailing “looked” very easy for them, they’re do not need to promote or sell the new products that they released, what they do is: They just upgrading their current portfolios, and users would eventually pay the upgrading fees. For most of friends, they used Dreamweaver 8, they’re now just waiting for the 9.0 version to be launched. Money will not be a constraint for them anymore. Adobe thus do not need to approaching any consumers and consumers perceived that they will benefited from the Adobe’s new products. That’s why the elephants can always dance.

By the way, you can download the Flash Player 9 if you’re running Linux platform on your PC by clicking here.