Bigger is Better... Right?

It appears the mantra of "bigger is better" has gripped developers of the late as the handsets we see keep getting larger and larger. When most of us first saw the HTC Evowe thought "Wow, 4.3 inch screen? That's huge!" We were used to seeing smart phone devices such as the iPhone, Nexus One, or N900 that at most sported a 3.7 inch screen. Personally I had assumed this was as large as our mobile handhelds were going to be getting for awhile.I was...

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Mugen Power N900 Extended Battery on the Way

If you are an N900 owner then you know one of the largest drawbacks to the device is the somewhat disappointing battery life. With heavy usage I've found I can drain the stock battery in my N900 in just over two hours. Searching around online I came across Mugen Power Batteries for the N900. Their extended battery sports 2400mah and should last much longer than the stock battery. Expect a comprehensive review once I get the battery and get a chance to run it through it's paces.~Jeff Hoogl...

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Pearson Education - You will NOT use Linux

Summer is winding down and fall semesters are starting all around the country. My girlfriend started classes this week and one of her online classes required her to purchase access to the Pearson Online Education system. After she paid out the $55.00 it costs to gain access to the website she clicked through to the login screen and was greet by this lovely pageI felt like bending over and saying "Thank you sir! May I have another?" After dealing...

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Bordeaux helps support Wineconf 2010 and FreeBSD

Projects die without dedicated people to manage them and having funding for an FOSS project allows for those dedicated people to spend more time devoted to the project itself (instead of working that silly "day job"). If you have been by my blog before then you know I write about Wine software every so often and on a few specific occasions about Bordeaux, a commercial Wine product.Now through October 3rd, 2011 Bordeaux is running a special donation promotion to help out a couple of important open source projects. The first of these is the annual...

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N900 OtterBox - Hands on Review

Ever looked at your N900 and think "You know what this needs? It needs to be bigger!"Yea... I didn't think so. I felt the same way, but I also knew that the $500.00 investment I had made in my N900 was worth protecting. Now, casing a sliding phone is not as easy as casing something that has no moving parts, such as an iPhone or the Nexus One. Because of this not all cases that are designed for the N900 are created equally, in fact prior to the OtterBox...

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Keep the "Linux" out of it Please

Android and Ubuntu are arguably the two largest Linux success stories to date. Ubuntu with its soaring success over other Linux-based desktop solutions and Android with its seemingly single handed domination of the mobile market.What makes these two distributions so successful?Anyone who owns a company or sells a product will tell you - you can have the best product in the world and no one would use it if you don't have the right advertising to back...

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Why this Linux Fan roots for MeeGo - not Android

Some people will tell you fragmentation is one of the main things that is holding back Linux from desktop adoption. Not having a unified name, packaging system, or heck even desktop environment often confuses new users and puts them into overload - Too much choice can be a bad thing.Android is currently the only real player in the Linux mobile market. Now don't get me wrong, I am glad Android jumped in record time to right near the top of the smart...

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HOWTO: Unlock your AT&T Tilt for all Networks

Something I hate more than anything else in the world is a software lock on hardware I own. If I bought something I should have the right to do anything with it that is within it's physical capabilities. Earlier this year I wrote how to get Android running on your HTC Tilt, if you followed that guide (or one like it) you will need to flash your Tilt back to Windows Mobile in order to unlock it.All you need in order to unlock the device is a foreign...

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It is a Windows World

"If you don't like Windows so much then don't use it!"This is something I have been told more than once (sometimes in not those kind of words) by various people when we have been discussing operating systems. As much as I would like to take their suggestion, the fact is I can't. The sad fact of the matter is, it is a Windows world for desktop computing. Microsoft has a monopoly on the marketplace and this isn't about to change anytime soon.My most...

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CWTV adds Support for Streaming to Linux

Back in March I had mentioned that one of the only issues I had to deal with when converting my girlfriend's laptop to Linux Mint was that her favourite TV show would not stream to Linux. The reason for this is that CWTV, instead of using Adobe Flash, uses Move Media player to stream to Windows and OSX (Move does not support Linux). Because of this if you are on a Linux system you would simply receive an "operating system not supported" message...

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32 bit vs 64 bit Linux - Which to Choose?

Do I want 32 bit or 64 bit?This is a question I have fielded many times, it is one most new Linux users ask before they even download their first Linux ISO. There is a short answer and a long answer to this question. The short answer:You want 32bit.Ok - now for the long answer. There are several things to consider when deciding if you want to use 32 bit or 64 bit on your system.Hardware Support:Does your processor support the 64 bit architecture? Most all modern processors do, but this is something you should double check if you are unsure about...

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Thousands Play Starcraft 2 on Linux

I play Starcraft 2 on Linux and apparently I'm not the only one. At the end of last month I wrote a brief guide for getting Starcraft 2 working under Linux using Wine. In the last ten days that guide has gotten nearly nine thousand views and currently has ninety comments.Now I've talked before about why I think there is a market for creating games for Linux and I think my above statistics only reinforce this idea. Don't believe me? Think about it...

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HOWTO: Perfect Terran Proxy Build Order - Starcraft 2

Today we take a short break from our normal broadcasting to talk about a bit of gaming strategy.In Starcraft 2 a "proxy" means you fore-go building in your own base and instead build your unit producing structures nearly on top of the opposing player. Timing is everything when using a proxy, so it is best used in maps where you know the starting location of your opponent(s). The following proxy build order is something I have been perfecting since...

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Wanted: A Decent, FOS, Cross Platform, Permission-Less, File-System

This is something I desperately want. Don't get me wrong, I think file system permissions are fantastic (they are one of the many things that make Linux superior to Windows), however one place they can be a true pain is when dealing with removable media. Don't believe me? Format your favorite flash drive to ext4 and enjoy having to change file permissions every time you plug it into a new computer. I use Linux on all my home computers, including my media center. Most of my video files are stored on a external 1.5TB ext4 hardrive, which means whenever...

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Wine vs Native - 3D Performance Benchmarks

In the past I've done Wine on Linux versus native Windows 7 benchmarks for 3D applications. Source engine games are some of my favorite benchmarking applications. Since Valve ported Steam to OSX earlier this year and I recently acquired an OSX PC I figured this would be an opportune time to see how Wine performance measures up to a native client, not only on the same hardware - but on the same operating system.My benchmarking tools this time around will be Counter Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2, as they both run native on OSX. For Wine software...

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N900 Faster Application Manager - Review

If you have ever installed an application on an N900 using the default application manager you know that while it is functional it is not the fastest of processes - especially if you are installing multiple applications. Enter the FOSS project, which you can currently find in the extras devel repository, Faster Application Manager. As the name implies FAM is a graphical interface for apt-get in Maemo and it lives up to it's name of being quicker....

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Tech Support: C Drive on Your Linux Phone may be Corrupted

I know first tier tech support at most all companies simply read from a script when trying to sort out the issue a customer is having. I understand why this is, nine times out of ten one of the few items on their list will resolve the issue. That being said, a couple weeks ago I went out on a limb and purchased Joikuspot for my N900. Joikuspot is an application that is suppose to easily allow you to share your 3G connection via wifi.Keywords there...

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