There’s a new mobile netbook in town and this one has a little bit of an additional component up it’s tiny sleeves to make it even that much more interesting. The Gdium Netbook from EMTEC has everything you’d except from the smaller form factor with some additional features that may make it even more appealing to other uses.

Gdium Netbooks from EMTEC

The Gdium has the smaller form factor, light-weight and a 10″ screen that displays 1024×600 resolution. It’s also completely based on open source software. What makes the Gdium unique though is that it also comes with the G-key to allow users to travel in more lightly with all of their information in tact.

Unique to the Gdium is the G-Key, a bootable USB key on which the Linux operating system, applications and personal data are stored. The G-Key allows each user to store their personal information and preferences securely, without leaving a trace on the computer.

I like this idea, but I’ll be honest I’m still not sure if the ultra-light, super-portable computer is something really for me. I don’t travel a lot anymore, and when I do it’s usually just to be onsite with clients. The work I’m doing onsite is development work and web site and application design. I need a full-size screen, I usually carry around a 2nd monitor (which I’d like to replace with this), a portable 320GB hard drive, and my Logitech VX Nano notebook mouse. Travelling light really isn’t a big deal for me.

My other challenge is keeping things synchronized. I’m too the point now where I do just about everything on my single laptop and have forgotten about trying to synchronize anything with my personal desktop or sometimes even the server at the office. The G-key is interesting solution though. I could work on my computer as normal, but if I ever needed to travel without it, I could pull the key and boot-up on another machine with no problems and feel like I was working on “my” machine.

What do you think?

Lots of discussion recently regarding all of the issues with pirates. These are the real kinds, not the Johnny Depp kind and not the kind that wear patches and fly the jolly-roger. The pirates I’ve been thinking about recently though are those of the software and digital content kind.

Images Source: www.sxc.hu

I had a friend recently tell me not to buy a CD that I was interested in because he had a copy of it and he would let me borrow. Although they didn’t tell me to go burn the disc so I would avoid buying it, but that’s the impression I got. My opinion is that’s plainly theft and piracy. Is there any difference between stealing that data and information and stealing any other property? I don’t think so.

Let’s expand that question to software itself. Do you install legal software on your machine? Do you get hacks and codes to circumvent user registration keys? What’s the difference?

Maybe your argument is that new copy of Microsoft Office isn’t worth $900 so why should I pay for it? Because that’s the price folks. If you don’t think it’s worth that, then don’t buy. Go download OpenOffice or get what use you can from Google Docs.

Every now and then a popular website gets hacked and tons of user passwords are published for everyone to see. On one side, it can potentially lead to huge losses to the users whose passwords have been compromised. On the other, security analysts use the data to gain various insights.

In one such recent attack, Robert Graham, the CEO of Errata Security, came to a few startling conclusions based on the passwords published showing what should not be your password:

• 16% of passwords matched a person’s first name
• 14% of passwords were patterns on the keyboard
• 4% are variations of the word “password”
• 5% of passwords are pop-culture references
• 4% of passwords appear to reference things nearby
• 3% of passwords are “emo” words
• 3% are “don’t care” words
• 1.3% are passwords people saw in movies/TV
• 1% are sports related

You can read the complete report here.

Password management is a big hassle that every Internet user has to deal with today. Apart from the regular ones that I use, I try out new products and services all the time and have over 50 different accounts as I speak. So I use a password management software called KeePass, which is open source. In the past, Jesse suggested several others like Billeo, Vidoop and Passpack. These softwares usually are also capable of generating strong passwords or you can use an online service like the Strong Password Generator to generate a password for you.

The most basic rule is to use a long combination of small and capital letters, numbers and symbols. Read this Microsoft Security article about how to create and use strong passwords.

We have all heard of the Pirate Bay, the bit torrent search engine site. It was sued by some biggies of the MPAA like MGM Pictures and Sony BMG, and the case began its trial yesterday in the Stockholm district court.

A police investigation took place way back in 2006 and the current trial is considered a consequence. The trial is being closely observed by the world because its judgment has the power to determine the future of the Internet regarding copyright infringement laws and rethink where cyber law stands.

The Pirate Bay is a Swedish site that facilitates users by providing links to torrents. It is considered the world’s largest bit torrent tracker and with an Alexa Rank of 109, I can now imagine how popular the site has become.

The Pirate Bay has millions of supporters and I am not one among them. I respect, encourage and support open source, but I have no delusions that those who take part in copyright infringement are being Robin Hood-ish. Music, movie, publishing and software industries are largely impacted by piracy and I can feel the pain when someone takes my content without my consent.

Without meaning to make it a Super Bowl match, on which side are you?

find is an elaborate search program with a number of features. Unlike the Google Desktop Search and locate, it doesn’t index anything but processes the request on the fly. Thus it is slower.

find is one of the most useful commands when you also have to search within unknown files and make further operations on the result set. It does a recursive search, looking in all subdirectories.

The first set of arguments is always the paths where the search should initiate. $ find /home /tmp <remaining arguments> would search based on the remaining arguments in /home, /tmp and all their subdirectories. If unspecified, the default path is taken as ‘.’, the current working directory.

To search for a specific filename pattern, –name <regexp> is used as the next argument. $ find /home /tmp –name *.sh returns all .SH files present in /home, /tmp and their subdirectories.

Instead of piping, to perform any operation on each of the results returned, –exec is used. $ find /home /tmp –name *.sh –exec grep todo ‘{}’ \; –print searches for the string todo in the above returned files. grep does the search and ‘{}’ implies that all results need to be processed. The –print prints the final output, the actual lines containing the specified string in the files.

Instead of grep, it could be chmod or chown or any operation that can be done of files. These above options are the most common use cases of find.

There are a number of other options to refine the search like complex expressions with boolean operators, the maximum and minimum depth of subdirectories that need to be traversed, the modification times and permissions on files, the file types, etc. You can read about all these in the manual page.

Jason was kind enough to accept my guest posts for his blogs Microsoft Weblog and Uncover the Internet. These are my first guest posts ever: one about Microsoft’s involvement with Open Source and another about watching movies legally on Youtube. I hope you enjoy them.

The last week has been filled with frenzy here in India with rumors about a $10 laptop. Not $100. It is $10. The prototype designed and developed by IISC Bangalore and IIT Madras (my alma mater) was unveiled today. Immediately, it has been hit by very negative reviews with reporters disappointed that it isn’t really even a netbook with scaled-down features. Of course, you can’t yet get a computer that costs 40 times less and has similar functionality.

Called “Sakshat”, the concept is similar to OLPC. While screenshots aren’t out yet, Sakshat has a small screen, 2GB disk space, wi-fi connectivity, computing capabilities, and perhaps some open source software. It has been created to hold textbooks and access online e-learning materials. As an alternative to text-books.

The first batch is expected to be shipped to some colleges in another six months.

Read The Hindu’s article covering the prototype launch (has one image).

I’ve realized that my last Tech Channel Roundup was nearly a month ago and I’m guilty of it. So, bear with me as I overload you with a number of interesting links that I found in some of the sister blogs.

Milo discovered a product especially useful for enterprises of all sizes called Nightwatchman, a good news that Microsoft didn’t lay off anybody in the Vista team. I knew that they didn’t touch the Silverlight team, but frankly I’m surprised about this because Vista hasn’t been very profitable to Microsoft. Or has it? One bad news is the Windows 7 minimum requirements. It may not be a good experience to try it on my netbook which just meets the minimum requirements and my laptop which is old enough to even miss the minimum. But if anyone is interested, you can get the Windows 7 look into Windows XP. He also found a couple of amusing videos, one called “how to say i love you.” and another a confirmation of love, a marriage at Taco Bell. Recession, aye?

Jason found a few websites that can assist you in unique ways: one for helping educate your kids, one a calendar to help others, and another to scan your computer online. He covered a lot of Windows Powertoys, a mobile media browser and found another reason to continue loving Zune. He also has a couple of how-tos for selecting non-linear text in a word document and sharing Outlook calendar availability. One bad news, I mean another one, is that Microsoft is shutting down MSN Groups.

Claire thought out loud about the gap between Linux and mainstream users, learnt something new about less (which all you Cygwin users may find useful), discovered a wonderful browser called Kidzui which attempts to make the Internet a more kid-friendly place.

Juan wonders whether the Mac is not invincible anymore and whether Apple really needs to make a netbook. He is glad to find a symbol cheat widget and an app that can save his day with a bunch of drawings. The latter isn’t my cup of tea. He along with Jayvee found out about Apple’s stand on piracy.

Launchy is a nice little utility that makes life easier, especially for all those users who prefer the keyboard to the mouse, say laptop users to whom typing a few keys is more convenient that navigating using the mouse.

It runs in the background and when invoked to the foreground allows you to launch various programs that you wish. There are a few similar apps like Colibri and yLaunch, but Launchy stands out for the wide range of features that can be customized.

To start with, the hotkey used to invoke Launchy can be set. I choose “Win + Space” instead of the default “Alt + Space” because the latter is already a keyboard shortcut to invoke the Restore menu. GUI options like opacity and fade times, length of suggestion lists; system options like time between catalog updates; skins are also customizable.

Coming to the catalog, the user can set the file types to be catalogued, directories to catalogue them from, and the maximum depth in each directory up to which cataloguing is to be done. Once the catalog is indexed for the first time, you are good to go. Suggestions as to which file you want to open are at your fingertips.

I only catalog my Start->Programs list for various reasons. I keep my PC quite organized, especially the Program files, and I use a different indexer for indexing all files on the system (which I’ll write about on next Friday).

Another great feature of Launchy is the plugins.

Apart from opening websites directly from the browser through Launchy, all your bookmarks and other commonly-used websites can be added for quick direct searches; it can directly use the calculator and the Google calculator,…

Let me not go on and on and rob you the pleasure of discovering this little app. You can download it from http://launchy.net and when you install it, you also get a well-written README, so there you go.

If you really like it, buy a cup of coffee to Josh Karlin, the one behind Launchy. Show your support to open source.

The terminal is an important aspect of Cygwin like for any Unix-based OS. For this reason, you might see its users like me chasing after fancy ways of beautifying it. Well, I will try to make this the last time.

Poderosa is the best terminal emulator for Cygwin that I have come across. It has a tabbed GUI, much like the PuTTY Connection Manager. However, in addition to the network communication protocols through which one can connect to a remote system using PuTTY, local Cygwin shells can also be opened using Poderosa. I use it mainly for the latter purpose.

Poderosa allows the user to set custom fonts and colors, keyboard shortcuts, command suggestions, etc. The “detailed preference editor” is especially useful, though not very straightforward to use. The app was built in a plug-in architecture and allows one to build custom plug-ins.

Poderosa too needs .NET Framework 2.0 preinstalled on your computer. Unlike PuTTY Connection Manager, I found Poderosa very stable. For telnet though, Poderosa gave me trouble where the PuTTY Connection Manager worked.

Poderosa, according to the website, had funding from the Japanese Govt. during 2005. Presently, its development seems to have stopped over a couple of years ago. The last release was v4.1.0 and you can get it from here.

Image Source: Poderosa on my PC.