Asia Source 3 is over but the spirit of the camp will still be alive. This is one thing that I could see from the Facebook and Twitter updates of everyone. There are people who miss camp already and there are those who are now asking more things about free and open source software. For me, that is something encouraging and heart-warming.
As a first time facilitator and participant, Asia Source 3 was a learning experience. It was not the typical workshop or conference as it was 6 day camp for us. There …read more

Ever wondered how you can manage your computer’s power so that it’s being used efficiently? This is something I think laptop users would be very concerned about so as to conserve battery time. You don’t want your computer to keep on using power while you’re away right? And of course a hassle-free experience will be ideal. Amazingly enough a research group has thought of a plan: by using sonar. What would be used for this experience is your computer’s mic and speakers.
Their plan:
The group developed software that, when the user is not using the mouse …read more

If you’re a collector like me then you probably have spreadsheets of these things you’ve collected in the past how many months or even years. Personally I only started becoming aware of the need to keep track of all these things. I think it’s partly because I am running out of shelf space. And some of my books ended up on my sister’s shelves. Tsk, it’s really time for me to sort things out!
Tell It to Tellico…
And Tellico will save just about everything you enter in the application. This is not a difficult application to …read more

I am thankful for these times that people also care about others because we don’t just talk about technology for work but how we could use technology to help ourselves amidst calamities. The past weekend was terrible in the Philippines but people from here and abroad all cared to share something with us to help my fellow Filipinos. I was one of the luckier ones that wasn’t badly affected by Typhoon Ketsana. Others were flooded and their homes were swept away by the water, and there are those who were able to leave their homes but everything …read more

Every Linux geek I’ve met recommended an essay called “In the Beginning was the Command Line” by Neal Stephenson. I suppose that it’s a bit dated because some of the things that were true back during the time it was written don’t necessarily hold true anymore. In any case it really is an interesting read because it gives new Linux users insight and humor at the same time.
From that essay, you could learn something about Linux and other operating systems as well. I didn’t really know about BeOS until I read that essay. And there were …read more

OSCON 2009 will be held this July 20-24 in San Jose, California at the McEnery Convention Center. It seems that they’re expecting 3,000+ people at the event from different backgrounds who share the same interest: Open Source Software. Hopefully this will be a good time to meet the software developers our favorite open source applications and learn from them.
A sample of topics:

Perl 6: Why? What? How?, Damian Conway, Thoughtstream
Introduction to Google App Engine, Joe Gregorio Google
How to Write Your Own Eclipse Plug-ins, Beth Tibbitts, IBM
Django in the Real World, Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Django
What You …read more

Sometimes we forget that Linux has a social aspect. Being part of the community that uses and/or maintains Linux distros, packages and specific applications make us learn new things from other people and more often than not we end up communicating with them online and if possible, offline. Some people get scared and intimidated of the ones who love saying “Read the manual” or “Search for the answers first before asking us. There’s plenty of information online that’s been written already.” But aside from that there really are friendly people in the world of free …read more

There are users who are totally resistant to change. Why? Because it disrupts their workflow. It makes them less productive. Change makes them cranky. However, there are times when change is needed and we have to lobby for it no matter what. If you think about your own home and your budget, sometimes you might think: Heck, the money spent on a license for a certain application could have been used for books of my child. I could have used an open source software of good quality and donated money to that project. …read more

No photos of me yet ^^;; Sorry. But the doll will suffice for now
The Sun Tech Days in Manila started yesterday but I wasn’t able to go. It was mainly a Netbeans day. This morning though, a lot of people were there and the hall was packed with people. The keynote emphasized on the opportunities we could have when it comes to software development and open source software in particular.
I attended sessions on JavaFX, Grails,and Open Solaris. I was curious about trying out Open Solaris on a VM (for the heck of …read more

I think that those who interact with clients who prefer Microsoft software and file formats would find it difficult. But there are apps that help make life a little bit easier by making it possible to import the file into Microsoft readable files. (Though of course, the reality is that there are constraints, because of the proprietary nature of Microsoft products.) A case in point would be MS Project files. I used to have a client whose project manager gave me an MS Project file and to make it easier on the team, it was exported as …read more