Console 3.0 - Gaming Web 3.0...

Those game consoles cost a lot. Or what about needing to spend money on games or software that you have trouble installing on your PC, or what about when you use Linux or Apple OSX and you want to play a Windows-only game, or when the software isn't as good as you thought etc? What if you could play games or use software, even stuff like Photoshop, via only your browser?

That, known as Game Streaming, is what some people are working on, and as you can see below, it already looks promising. No idea what bandwidth is required. And no idea if some games where fast responses are of the essence already work like that, but if we can replace the large category that does not need that sub 10 millisecond responsetimes, that would be great! I wonder what the pricing (pay per use? Pay per month etc) will be.


Besides Gaikai, there is also OnLive:

Test mobiel werken: voorlopig nog niet geslaagd

Momenteel werk ik in Almere. In verband met een reistijd enkele reis van ca 2 uur en de kosten van benzine die in de buurt lagen van een treinabonnement, probeer ik 'mobiel werken' uit via KPN: werken in de trein. Maar dat valt voorlopig tegen.

Bij de NGN blogde ik over mijn ervaring met de KPN Dongel ("goeiemoggel ... lekker interneppen", ik heb Dongle-type Huawei E270, die KPN kent als "Mobiel Internet Modem 802") in combinatie met de trein en een Citrix omgeving, en zie je ook reacties van anderen.

Ik meldde KPN (feb 2009) ondermeer dat "ik reis van Rijssen naar Almere, per trein. Op dat traject valt de verbinding op meerdere plekken terug naar GSM of minder. Omdat ik dat traject dagelijks reis EN ik niet zomaar een mailtje lees, maar echt breedband nodig heb, is de slechte verbinding HEEL vervelend. Een tegenvaller tov de belofte van landelijke dekking. De verbinding valt bv bij Deventer (ri Apeldoorn) weg, op de Veluwe, rond Hilversum etc weg. Welke verwachtingen mag ik hebben voor verbetering? Gaan er extra masten bij komen op korte termijn?".

De reactie: "Tussen Deventer en Apeldoorn zijn er inderdaad plaatsen waar het UMTS netwerk indoor niet dekkend is. Op korte termijn zal dat niet veranderen. Het is onbekend of dat op langere termijn gaat veranderen.". Met dank, en als waarschuwing voor mensen die op die route reizen en mobiel willen werken. Zijn er andere netwerken die rond die plaatsen wel gewoon goede dekking hebben?

Ondertussen probeer ik de omgeving ook werkend te krijgen onder Ubuntu: connectie maken met de Citrix-omgeving lukt. Nu de Dongle nog aan de gang krijgen: ik heb een project gevonden van Vodafone, maar ik ben nog bezig dat met mijn Dongle aan de gang te krijgen.

Update 4 feb 2009: ondertussen werk ik met een Macbook pro. De Dongel doet het, maar de dekking is nog net zo slecht :-(.

Upgrade lesson: wait some time!

(before turning people off: i recommend you try Ubuntu: it's great! But like with any OS-upgrade: be sure you have a backup. The newest Ubuntu has a great feature: Wubi: you can install Ubuntu on top of Windows, like any usual application: a great way to try it out (and see if all of your hardware already is supported with the right drivers))
My Ubuntu (version 7.10, Gutsy) told me a new version of Ubuntu was available: 8.04 (Hardy Herron). Since i loved Ubuntu, i thought: lets try it, it can only get better, right? Wrong! Having done lots of operating system upgrades before and knowing you can get lucky with a smooth install, but more often you'll run into problems, i should have known better. Why would ANY OS be any better than another when doing upgrades?

You guessed it: upgrading my Acer Travelmate 4001WLMi (with Ati Mobility Radeon 9600 / 9700 graphics card) ran into some problems :-). First of all i had problems with graphics (like an almost completely white screen where you couldn't see the mouse anymore). I managed to solve that, but i wanted at least a system doing what i had gotten used to: Ubuntu with Compiz (Vista Aero effects etc) and Cairo Dock (Mac OSX dock effect). But i was unable to get both running. I looked around the internet, tried al kinds of tricks, reinstalls, de-installs etc, but finally ended up with a system which didn't even boot the GUI (X) anymore, whatever i tried...

So i wanted to downgrade to Gutsy, which worked perfect for me. But how, when you're on a machine with broken DVD drive? Looked around and found this article about booting Windows (my laptop is dual boot, which by the way is great, especially when you screw up one of the 2 ;-)) and running the Ubuntu installer (and other flavours) from within Windows. The 1st worked for me. So i'm back on Gutsy, waiting for Hardy to get better in supporting my config (apparently Ati and Nvidia configurations can run into problems).

Delete bootmenu items

Some updates of Linux-distro Fedora on my multi-boot XP/Fedora laptop add an extra option to my boot-menu: it adds like a new Fedora-version, so i can both boot the old and the new version, i guess. Since i don't do Linux-commands often, i always forget how to remove that extra bootoption, so i document it here :-) :

- start a command-line (called terminal in linux), mostly found somewhere in the menu ;-)
- make yourself admin (su - command)
- switch to the directory (map) with the bootmenu config-file: cd /boot/grub
- edit the config-file: gedit menu.lst
- remove the lines with the oldest fedora-entry
- save the file and exit the editor
- the new boot-menu will be used at the next reboot
- you might want to delete the old fedora-image. In the terminal-session, switch to the directory/map holding those images: cd /boot
- look what'ś there: type ls and press the enter-/return-key
- delete the files with the old Fedora-number: rm (rm = remove = delete)
- exit the terminal-session: exit

Linux with built in wmv-support

I love the open source movement, and have Linux on a lot of my machines, mostly in dual boot configurations. I even tried Linux on the PC of my mother; i used Xandros, as i thought that to be a nice and easy distro. But it turned out to have some problems with streaming Windows media.

I guess Linux pro's can solve that, but it took me far to much time. Even the machine i have Fedora on, doesn't support wmv-video. I tried to get it working, read i had to add repositories (had a tough time finding out how), and ran into error messages when i tried to install w32codecs.

So i decided to look and see whether there are any distro's which support common web-stuff like wmv out of the box.

I found PCLinuxOS and (simply)Mepis. I will have a look at them later, but thought to jot that down already. Any tips are welcome :-).

Oh: check out distrowatch for the latest versions, most popular Linux-distro's etc.

I was fiddling around with Fedora (6), one of the major Linux flavors. After installing it, i found out it took quit some time to boot. As i am not a Linux specialist, i was looking around for some help to see whether i could speed up the boot time. I finally found this thread about Bootchart: this allowed me to get info on what was going on during boot. Together with a list of processes on Linux and whether they are needed for what you want to accomplish, i was able to almost half the boot time.

A nice multi media production Linux distribution: Ubuntu Studio. Create, play, mix, match audio and video.