Foo Camp 2006

This year, I was one of the lucky few who received an invitation to O’Reilly’s Foo Camp. Like many people, I had heard just how cool this exclusive get-together is, but I was nowhere near prepared for how mind-blowingly awesome the Foo Camp experience can be.

I arrived in Sebastopol on Friday afternoon and began to unpack my tent. The tent I bought ended up being bigger than I expected I think I grabbed the wrong one, but it worked out fine given that I was sharing it with Alex Graveley. Alex wasn’t there yet, though, so I started to unpack it myself, which ended up being a bit difficult… But then a very kind and helpful Mark Shuttleworth walked by and offered a hand. Before long, the tent was set up and I was ready for the fun.

There were only a handful of people there at this point, so I decided to walk around and see the place. One of the rooms had this interesting table with a map on it. A projector was mounted above, and people were around the table, turning and tilting. It was quite cool. Turn the table and it zooms in and out. Tilt it and the map moves. It was the most natural way of viewing maps that I’ve ever used. Quite addicting in a way.

Outside was this kind of round spinnable art thing. It was like the table, but had this colored fluid sand-like substance inside. It was held up at an angle, and when you spun it, the sand-like stuff made some cool patterns. That was also fun to play with. 🙂

Before long, most of the Foo Camp guys were there, and we gathered under a tent to introduce ourselves and learn what was in store for us. It was amazing to see the people who were there. The creators of Digg, del.icio.us, LiveJournal, Second Life, 43things, Amazon, Meebo, Django, Chumby, people from Google, Microsoft, Intel, Yahoo… The list goes on and on.

I went to several sessions. There was one on the future of IM, another on robots, one on Dr. Who vs. Snakes on a Plane, another on Chumby hacking. I think I went to another one or two, but I can’t remember right now. They were all pretty interesting, and there were many more I didn’t have time to go to.

As mentioned above, one of the session talks was about Chumby. Chumby is a cute, soft, squishy Linux computer that is designed to sit next to your couch or your bed or whatever and stream flash content to you. The software and hardware are all open source, and there’s people modifying the casing of the Chumby and sticking it in teddy bears, Teletubbies, Hello Kitties, etc. It’s currently very pre-alpha (both the hardware and the software), but we all knew that. The Foo campers received free Chumbies. The public release will be in like 6 months or so, and should by then have more features and be a bit more stable. Still, it’s an interesting concept, and I hope they come up with a killer app for it. With an intended price tag of $150, it could be a good purchase with the right target audience and apps.

At nights, we would play Werewolf. This is pretty much a Foo Camp tradition, and is played well into the night. I was a werewolf only once, but we kicked ass that one time 🙂

Let’s see, what else was there… A Google plane flew overhead and took pictures, which will go on Google Maps at a 2 inch resolution. There were flame-throwing robots, a clown, lots of good food, new friends, a reverse scavenger hunt… Probably more things than I can list. It is the best event I have ever gone to, and I hope to be invited back next year. To whoever it was that put me on the invite list, thank you. This was an opportunity I will never forget.

(More pictures available in my gallery and tagged on Flickr.)

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Gallery Virtual Appliance

Virtual machines used to be all about managing your data center or server consolidation or running applications that only run on some other operating system. Lately, virtual machines have been gaining momentum in a new area: software distribution.

This is actually quite powerful. Instead of a giving a user a complex set of instructions for installing some application or web service, and telling them what they need to install beforehand and what distros or operating systems it works on, the distributor or project can instead provide a bare-bones virtual machine containing the application or service pre-configured, and users can simply download it and power it on. It’s a great way of previewing applications or even running them day-to-day (depending on the application).

There’s a wonderful service out there called Gallery. It’s a web-based photo gallery that users can install on their server in order to share photos with the world. There’s a number of modules available. Many programs work with it. You can do things like order prints through the web. Great program.

And it’s now available in a virtual appliance! They have a description and instructions for setting it up, and I’ve been informed that they plan to keep it updated with each new release. It contains both Gallery 1 and Gallery 2, giving users a chance to see the differences between the versions and decide which suits them best. It can be used in VMware Player, Server, Workstation, and probably ESX (I haven’t tried). It’s downloadable from their website or from VMTN. You can see h0bbel’s blog post for more information on the appliance.

I think this is awesome and I hope it works out well for them and for the users. I’d love to see more projects go this route, and with any luck, Gallery will have set a precedent in the web services world. And for the developers creating these appliances, please feel free to let us know what VMware could do to make your lives easier. We welcome feedback, and you can send it directly to me.

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Snakes on a Plane in a Movie Theater on a Friday

Several members of our team at work went to see Snakes on a Plane on Friday. A number of us have been looking forward to this movie and were jazzed about it. I didn’t expect it to be a good movie, but I expected it to be enjoyable. It actually exceeded my expectations in a number of ways. They even made somewhat of an attempt to come up with a plot! Not that you need one, given that in this movie, you have motherf***’n snakes on a motherf***’n plane. I mean, how awesome is that?

I don’t know if he was kidding or not, but Samuel L. Jackson mentioned on the daily show (video) that he’ll be in the sequel. I don’t know whether a sequel would be a good thing or a bad thing, but if they make it, it should definitely be called “Snakes on a Plane Again.”

And to further add to the, um, coolness? … someone made an All Your Snakes are Belong to Us video.

Oh, and Alex Graveley is now a zombie.

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VMware Server 1.0 Released

As most people have probably seen on Slashdot or Digg by now, we just released VMware Server 1.0. As promised, it is a free product and should run your virtual machines much faster than the earlier betas did.

(If you’re not sure what VMware Server is all about, please read my original post.)

VMware Server has already been deployed at several companies ever since beta 1. I’ve always found that amusing, given how young the product was at that stage (even though this is essentially GSX 4). However, my experience in talking to beta testers so far is that most people are pretty happy with the product, especially given the price. I am personally running it at home for my Linux development VMs and it has been working nicely.

My thanks go out to all the testers that have reported problems or who have given us feedback of any kind. As one of the developers on VMware Server, it has been nice hearing positive reports and stories :).

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libnotify 0.4.1/0.4.2 released

I just put out a release of libnotify 0.4.1. It has support for the new GtkStatusIcon (when compiled against GTK+ 2.9.2 or higher) and the documentation has been moved over to gtk-doc, so if you compile libnotify with –enable-gtk-doc, you should see a new “Libnotify” book in devhelp. There’s also a bunch of bug fixes too. Release notes are available.

I have some nice fixes and feature enhancements planned for notification-daemon that I’d like to get to before long. Some optional window slide-in/out or fade-in/out effects for the notification bubbles, maybe a new theme, and better notification placement.

Update: libnotify 0.4.2 is now released, with a G_BEGIN_DECLS and G_END_DECLS in notify.h so that deadchip can make C++ bindings. Woot!

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A Nintendo DS Lite! And it’s all mine!

I was talked into buying a Nintendo DS a while back, and was about to shell out the money when I found out that the DS Lite was in development. So I waited… and waited… and then preordered… and waited some more… And now I have it! It’s quite cool, actually. I bought New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart, and Princess Peach (for my girlfriend). I think I’m going to buy Brain Age and Tetris DS in a couple of days.

So I’m looking for two things now: Friend codes and game suggestions. If you have one of the above games and wish to share your friend code, or you have any games you highly recommend I buy, please either post a comment or e-mail me.

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A small review of the Nokia 770’s 2006 firmware beta

Jeff Waugh beat me to the punch on a blog about the new firmware for the Nokia 770. I have to agree with him: The Nokia 770 is ready for the enterprise. And for the home.

I installed the 2006 software update last night for the first time. While I have been coordinating with the Nokia and OpenedHand developers for a while, actually using the new software was a surprisingly pleasant experience. That’s an understatement. The software absolutely rocks.

Performance

Many criticized the 2005 firmware for its lack of responsiveness. It felt sluggish at times. Some resorted to setting up a swap partition on the memory card, which helped a bit. So far, I’d have to say that the 2006 firmware feels a lot faster and more responsive than the 2005 firmware. Setting up a swap partition is as easy as checking a box in the control panel and setting a swap size. I haven’t tried setting up swap yet, but I haven’t felt the need. I was browsing a couple webpages, streaming music, and chatting without any real problems.

Visual Improvements

The look and feel has had a number of updates, and I love the results. The old style felt more monotone.. Black, white, grey, some hints of purple. The new style is a vibrant orange. The chrome along the side is rounded, and the Web, Conversation and Application buttons now look somewhat like actual buttons that push in on one side. (I wish I had screenshots at this point.)

The style can, of course, be changed. There are four themes available to choose from, the first (and default) being the orange theme. The second is a variation on the first theme, but in an aqua color. The style of the sidebar changes slightly in this theme. It gets a kind of winterish background.

The third theme is also a variation on the first, but in blue. As in #0000FF. Very blue. The only difference I can see other than the color is that the style of the clock applet changes, which is a neat little touch.

The fourth theme resembles the original style of the 2005 firmware, which some may prefer. A lot of the graphics, such as the clock and applet borders, are changed. This style may look “more professional” to some people.

Home Screen Improvements

The Home screen will at first glance look pretty familiar to existing users, until they notice the Google search bar above the RSS reader, and the contact list under the radio player. Users can now quickly perform a Google search using the search bar (which looks as if it may support other search engines in the future?), and see the presence of their favorite contacts in the contacts list. I’ll get to that part in a bit.

Don’t like the layout of the Home screen? You can finally change it! Under the menu, there’s a Select Applets menu item that allows you to specify which applets you want to see and which you don’t, and a couple items underneath it is an Edit Layout item. With this, you can actually drag around the applets and reorder the display how you see fit. Unfortunately, it uses pixel precision, and there doesn’t appear to be any snap-to-grid of any sort. Still, it’s quite promising.

Thumb Board

The Thumb Board is the new input method introduced in the 2006 firmware. It works as a full-screen keyboard where you type by using your thumbs. To invoke it, just put pressure on an input field with your thumb. You’ll hear a little sound effect and the board will appear.

The thumb board shows the alphabet at a glance, and each key is big enough to be pressed by the tip of a thumb. Other common keys, such as the spacebar, quotes, period, comma, dash, backslash, and colon are also available. Above the letter keys are a set of tabs. Press the “Abc” tab to switch between lowercase and uppercase. The “1!+” tab shows numbers and other common symbols (@, plus, minus, question mark, exclamation mark, etc.). The third tab has less used but still common enough symbols. The more common ones are the brackets, braces, percent, etc., but there’s also a copyright symbol, trademark, fancy quotes, mid dot, and others.

The thumb board may take a little practice at first, but I found I was typing along rather well last night. It feels well thought out, and is my new input method of choice on the 770.

Messaging and Contacts

Now this is where things get cool. This software update is all about the messaging. You’re able to set up accounts on Jabber and Google Talk (I believe there will be more options in the future?) and then manage their presence through an icon on the top. While connected, you can receive IM and Google Talk voice invites. You can also send them, of course, and this is done through the new Contacts list.

The developers decided not to use a traditional buddy list, and I think that was a great move. They have cleanly integrated the concept of a buddy list into a very easy to use addressbook. Your accounts will automatically get their own special groups in the addressbook’s sidebar. Along with your personal groups and account groups are special “Online” and “Recent” groups. “Online” shows you a list of people who are online (as the name suggests). “Recent” shows a list of people you have most recently talked to.

You can add new people to your addressbook or edit the information of contacts from your IM accounts. The information you can set is about what you would expect. First name, last name, nickname, picture, e-mail addresses, IM accounts. Pretty much the bare essentials. When connected to an IM service, each entry in the addressbook that has an IM account on file will have an icon representing the person or account’s presence.

Tap a person and their details come up, along with Call, Chat, and E-mail buttons. Press Call to initiate a Google Talk voice conversation with them. Press Chat to begin an IM conversation. Press e-mail to e-mail. It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that, does it?

I haven’t tried to call anybody yet, but the chat conversatoins work great. The 770 will play a little chime and subtly flash an icon when someone says something in a chat. It’s both easy to notice and easy to choose to ignore. Just how an IM client should be 🙂

The contact list remembers people who were found to be in your buddy lists last time you connected. If you’re not connected to an IM service or even to the internet, initiating a chat will attempt to auto-connect to both.

Package Manager

Finally! A real package manager! The package manager that came with the 2005 update was problematic, and heaven forbid you had an error in your package. Sometimes you couldn’t even uninstall it. The new package manager is clean, easy to use, and actually supports package feeds. I added FBReader’s feed last night as a test. It updated its list, showed FBReader as available (along with a version number and brief summary), and a couple taps later I had it installed.

After installing a package, it will ask where you would like to place the menu item. The placement can be re-editted later. This is a warm welcome to people who are used to digging around in their Extras menu for all sorts of different programs.

Galago!

I’m pleased to say that Galago is being used for integrating presence information and such into the addressbook. This is the first real third party use of Galago. The developers from Nokia and OpenedHand have been key in helping to get Galago into a mature state. There’s a lot more work to do, and various optimizations are being made.

I’d like to see us do on the desktop what Nokia and OpenedHand have managed to do extremely well on the 770.

Overall…

Awesome release. The 2006 firmware is a work of art… And it’s still only a beta. I can’t wait to see the final release, and then I will be recommending this to a lot of people. If you have a 770, download the new firmware and give it a shot.

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Bocce Ball

The VMware Hosted UI group (the group I’m a part of) went on a team-building exercise today. We had a nice meal and then went to play Bocce Ball, which is a game that until today I had very little knowledge of. It turns out to be a pretty cool game, with some strategy involved. Our team kicked ass 😉 I’m actually hoping to play again at some point soon. Perhaps we can buy some Bocce Balls and play in the hallways by our new offices.

Oh, yeah, so we moved offices at work. My nice corner office is no longer mine. However, the new office is actually bigger, and the view isn’t too bad. I’ve only spent a few hours in it so far, but it’s not as bad as I feared. I’ll have to take pictures soon.

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Augmented Reality

An article appeared on Digg.com yesterday talking about a possible leak about the Nintendo Revolution/Wii. It referred to a video that was linked to in the comments. This video gave a demonstration of Augmented Reality, and while this technology is only rumored to be in the Revolution, it’s still fascinating to watch.

Augmented Reality basically allows for real-time merging of a live video stream and 3D graphics in such a way that the 3D objects can in a sense react to changes in the real world. Virtual tanks running around a real table and bumping into things, for instance, or holding a weapon in your hand and walking around with it. Now if only they had a good way of projecting this out into the real world without bulky, expensive equipment.

It will be very interesting to see if any of these rumors about Augmented Reality integration in the Revolution are true. E3 is coming up, so we’ll finally know what Nintendo is actually up to. Hopefully it will live up to expectations.

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