This morning I got caught in an RSS tornado.  I was minding my own business in gmail on my Eee PC when I must have accidentally clicked on “Google Reader”.  The next thing I know, over 1,000 news articles were at my fingertips.

No, this is not an ad for Google.  There are plenty of services for RSS, but I normally use Akregator to handle mine on my desktop.  I never bothered to set it up on my netbook.

The funny part of it all is that I have no recollection of ever setting up Google Reader.  I would have needed to import my .opml file (the file that contains the feeds) in order for my feeds to be there on demand, that is unless Google somehow scooped off of my hard drive (I’m working on a new conspiracy theory).  So much for getting work done.  Darn cloud computing.

News has been circulating about the patent lawsuit between Microsoft and a company called TomTom.  Microsoft claims that, by using the Linux kernel, TomTom is infringing upon some of its patents.  By settling out of court, it seems to give Microsoft an opportunity to go after other Linux-based vendors.

I, however, believe this move from Microsoft comes too little and too late.  We saw what happened with SCO vs. the World.  Novell, IBM, et al ate them for lunch.  One might think that it still means that Microsoft can bully the smaller companies, but I do not think that is practical for them.

The reality is that Linux started outside of the business world, and it will continue to thrive on its own whether or not Microsoft sues companies that use it or not.  Free software is free and continually changing.  Suing a company for using Linux is like suing them for using the Internet.  It sounds to me as though Microsoft is getting pretty desperate, pathetically desperate.

Amarok 2.0.2 was recently released, and I am happy to say that, unlike the few naysayers, I believe it is a fantastic product that will propel KDE to the next level.  I would not go back to Amarok 1.4.

Now that I have made that clear, I can freely discuss the problems I am currently having with it.  The phonon Xine backend has never worked with Alsa on my computer.  It simply produces no sound.  The Gstreamer backend worked with KDE 4.1 and 4.2.  With KDE 4.2.1, the Gstreamer backend ceased functioning.  I do not know if this is a local Kubuntu issue or a KDE-wide one, but it is a serious problem.  In order to get sound back into Amarok, I had to enable the Xine backend and then use Pulseaudio.

There is an Ubuntu forums thread here.  If anyone has any suggestions regarding this, please leave a comment.  I will post a bug report soon.

Drive far enough west on 16th street in Indianapolis, and you will see a billboard advertisement for the OLPC “give one, get one” program, wherein you buy two: one going to a child in a third-world country and the other being delivered to your house.

I could not help but chuckle at their gimmicky slogan:

“Give a laptop.  Get a laptop. Change the world.”

Being the avid Heroes fan that I am, I could not help but picture the futuristic Hiro Nakamura saying, “Save the laptop, save the world.”

Click the image for a larger peek.  I did not have my camera while driving to work.  The picture came from here.

But the new Google G1 phone is fruit and cake.*

If I were to ever buy another mobile phone, it would most likely be one of these.  It is slick, user-friendly, and reasonably priced.  The best thing, however, is that it runs Android, a free and open source Linux-based operating system.  It is extendable, expandable, and oh-so-cool.

*My apologies to Nabisco.