Jaslabs: High performance Software

By Justin Silverton

In a recent article here:

Microsoft is “very interested” in the Ruby programming language and also plans to expand its Expression design tools line, a Microsoft official said this week.

During an Internet chat with InfoWorld, Forest Key, Microsoft director of Web and client user experience marketing for the company’s developer division, acknowledged Ruby is on the company’s radar screen. Asked if the company would accommodate the Ruby on Rails Web framework, which is based on Ruby, in Expression, Key said, “Ruby is currently more of a ‘developer’ concept for us.”

“We are very interested in Ruby and have lots of thinking going on,” but nothing to announce at this time, Key said. He advised chatters to “stay tuned.”

Key added he was not the Microsoft person to comment in detail on this subject because he did not know the company’s plans. One chatter expressed wishes for an IDE for Ruby on Rails from Microsoft.

SapphireSteel, meanwhile, has shipped Ruby in Steel Developer, a Ruby environment for Visual Studio.

Commenting on the future of the new Expression line, Key said the company was “just getting started with V1 (version 1) of the Expression Studio,” which includes the suite of Expression tools.

One area targeted for expansion is interaction design, which pertains to designing the actual interaction or structure of an experience rather than just designing the onscreen pieces. A goal is to better tie Visio, the company’s diagram drawing software used by many interaction designers, to Expression and the company’s Visual Studio software development platform.

Sapphiresteel can be found here.

By Justin Silverton

In a recent article here

The new team of leaders at Dell is weighing a request to give customers the option to purchase PCs with the Linux OS, instead of the default Windows, after thousands of users voted for that idea on a company blog.

The idea appeared Friday on a company-hosted blog called Dell Idea Storm. CEO Michael Dell unveiled the blog Feb. 16 as part of his effort to reinvigorate the struggling company. Dell said he hoped to use the blog to collect users’ feedback and improve customer service.

Since then, company executives and department heads have been monitoring the site, paying closest attention to the ideas winning the most votes, Dell spokeswoman Caroline Dietz said on Wednesday.

The most popular threads on Wednesday included demands for Linux-based laptops, consumer PCs that are not pre-loaded with unsolicited applications and requests for Sun Microsystems’ OpenOffice applications instead of Microsoft’s Office suite. Popular requests also included a preference for Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser instead of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and pleas for Dell to stop routing service calls to operators in overseas countries such as India.

The actual posts can be found here

Here is the top story:

“Offer the 3 top free Linux versions for free pre-installation on all Dell PCs.

Offer trade-ins and Linux CDs for older model Dell PCs. Cast your vote for the mini Linux Dell PC and the Universal Education Dell PC, both utilizing free software”

By Justin Silverton

From a recent article

“Japan’s Turbolinux will begin selling its Wizpy Linux-based multimedia player in February. As a bonus, the device can also be used to boot a PC into the Linux OS, allowing users to access their files in their own working environment on almost any PC.,

The Wizpy will be available first to customers in Japan via the company’s home page on February 23 and then in shops in March. It will come in two models: a 2GB version will cost $245 and a 4GB version will cost $281.”

Some cool features

• A 1.7-inch organic light-emitting diode color screen
• plays music in Ogg, MP3, and Windows Media Audio formats
• plays XviD and MPEG4 movies and displays JPEG images
• records straight to MP3 files, displays text files, and has an FM radio built-in

Aside from the features above, what sets it apart from other players is the fact that you don’t have to have an operationg system installed on your system. To the computer, the Wizpy looks like a bootable USB CD-ROM or hard drive, which means most computers will boot the Linux OS directly (turbolinux).

The Operating System+software takes up around 1GB of memory, so that leaves either 1GB or 3GB left for storing files or multimedia, depending on the model. It will also be able to connect to a network through the host PC and also access connected peripherals.

The official site can be found here

By Justin Silverton

Jrotate version 3 has been released!

Jrotate is A web photo gallery for displaying all of your favorite pictures.

• Easy Site integration
• Thumbnail support
• Multiple galleries
• 1 year free updates

This new version includes many bug fixes and updates.

A demo can be downloaded Here

By Justin Silverton

In a suprising (yet not so surprising) announcement:

“Sun will release the first pieces of source code for Sun’s implementation of JSE (Java Platform Standard Edition) and a buildable implementation of JME (Java Platform Micro Edition).

Sun will also be making JEE (Java Platform Enterprise Edition) available under the GNU GPL v2 (General Public License version two).”

This sudden interest in open sourcing java has not always been the case.

“By open-sourcing Sun’s implementation of Java technology, we will inspire a new phase of developer collaboration and innovation using the NetBeans IDE [Integrated Development Environment] and expect the Java platform to be the foundation infrastructure for next generation Internet, desktop, mobile and enterprise applications,” said Rich Green, Sun’s executive VP of Software, in a statement.”

With the JDK [Java Development Kit] released as free software under the GPL, Sun will be working closely with distributors of the GNU/Linux operating system, who will soon be able to include the JDK as part of the open-source repositories that are commonly included with GNU/Linux distributions. Sun is releasing these technologies as open source in order to accelerate Java’s development and evolution.  In addition, Sun said it hopes that it will reduce fragmentation and drive down development costs throughout the Java ME ecosystem. In addition, this move will provide easy access to the latest versions of Java ME platform technologies and, for the first time, enable the whole Java ME community to follow the activities of and participate in the development of these technologies.

This is a step in the right direction for Sun.  With the power of the open source community, Java will now have more of a future as a development platform.