Why are you telling Amazon what I am searching for?

We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root all your base are belong to us. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update.

Sorry, I could not help myself. Seriously though, Mark Shuttleworth’s argument is technically correct, but I think he could have made it in a more diplomatic fashion, especially when he starts his next paragraph with:

In summary – please don’t feed the trolls.

Doh!

All joking aside, I do feel for Mark and the Canonical folks. It seems that whenever they try something new which has even the slightest hint of commercialism, they catch a tonne of flak. Yet, I rarely read any praise about the sums of money Mark must have personally invested into the project. To me, it all seems just a little unfair.

Anyhow, regarding the new Amazon feature, I think I can understand why it is being implemented, but as many commentators on Mark’s blog have already mentioned, I think this type of service is best suited to a user’s web browser. Erm, unless the aim is to make money, in which case, it makes perfect sense to incorporate affiliate links into an OS’s GUI.

Also, anonymity issues aside (they don’t really concern me too much), my main concerns would be:

• vendor favouritism and the possibility that users might not be given, or shown the best deals. I mean, Amazon is normally pretty competitive, but it can often pay to shop around. In which case, a web browser would be the preferred tool.
• UI clutter. In comparison to performing other tasks, such as opening applications and searching for local files, how often would the average user open Unity’s dash with the intention of shopping on Amazon? I do not know, but I would question the ratio and therefore I would also question whether Amazon’s (or any other vendor’s) products should be featured at all.

That said, in his blog post, Mark also states:

What we have in 12.10 isn’t the full experience, so those who leap to judgement are at maximum risk of having to eat their words later.

So, it will be interesting to see how this develops. Also, if you have not read it already and you are at all interested, Jono Bacon has written a compelling blog post that highlights the benifits of the recent dash improvements. Personally, I think the jury is still out.

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Tagged: amazon, canonical, ubuntu

**sad face**

So, why have I been so busy? Well, mainly because I have taken a new position as a PHP developer.

**happy face**

I am now working for small local business, developing some interesting projects with great potential. There are just three developers in the office and it feels great to be working within a small team. I am really enjoying it and loving the challenge.

As part of my new position, I have been working with CodeIgniter, a rather nifty PHP framework. Now, I have always steered well clear of frameworks for my own projects, but I have to admit that CodeIgniter is really quite nice. It has some fantastic libraries and helpers, yet manages to stay quite lean and lightweight. At some point in the future, I may take a look at rewriting some of my own little projects to take advantage of some of its features.

WordPress is something else that has been taking up a fair amount of my time, which is quite surprising as I kind of lost interest in it a good few years ago. Anyhow, I wanted to take another look at it in more depth as I have been thinking about using it for a potential project; so, I took a look, and I am still looking; interestingly, or not, I get the impression that once you strip away much of the crufty (subjective) features/functions/widgets etc, it is pretty much the same old WordPress that it used to be. I wonder why I have perceived it to be anything else?

Finally, there is Ubuntu and Unity. Now, I installed Ubuntu Natty with Unity a good few weeks ago, and surprisingly, it is still on my system. I thought I might have been slightly premature in declaring my love for Unity last month, but as it turns out, the more I use it, the more I like it. It really is a pleasure. Sure, there are a few little bugs here and there, but for the most part, it just works. And I’ll be honest, after a good few years of wrangling with putting CrunchBang together, a vanilla Ubuntu install with Unity comes as a bit of a relief — please, do not flame me for saying that.

Talking of CrunchBang, I am currently on hiatus from the project. I do feel kind of guilty for not being able to spend time working on it, but sometimes, real life and other interests have to take priority.

Oh, wait second, I nearly forgot to mention my conversion from Bazaar to Git. Yes I have seen the light, finally!

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Tagged: bazaar, codeigniter, crunchbang linux, git, php, ubuntu, unity, work

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Tagged: ubuntu, unity

• Debian || Ubuntu || Fedora || openSUSE
• 32-bit || 64-bit
• Openbox || Xfce
• Firefox || Chromium
• Et cetera…

In a world full of madness, I count myself lucky because I only have such trivial matters to worry about; I also count myself lucky because I have huge amounts of excellent free software to choose from.

The year is 2011, the world has turned bonkers-mad, yet I seem more concerned about which WWW browser to use. :/

I wonder, how many other people use their interest in free software as a form of escapism?

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Tagged: chromium, debian, fedora, firefox, openbox, ubuntu, xfce

The unconference is being held on the 2nd of April 2011 at Madlab in Manchester, which looks like a fantastic venue. Tickets are free [yes, you read that correctly], but there are limited numbers.

Anyhow, here is a list of what I will be missing out on:

• Dan Lynch’s Keynote
• Les Pounder’s “Aubergine is not the only colour” - A look at other Debian based distributions
• Anna Morris’ Okay Computer – A workshop in Free Software Philosophy and Ubuntu
• Charlie Owen’s Whistlestop Tour of Ubuntu
• Plus various other workshops, talks and discussions

Sad face.

I will not be attending Ucubed because I will supporting Becky as she attempts to run 10 kilometres around the city of Lincoln — rather her than me. Becky has been training really hard for the event and I am super proud of her. She is running to raise funds for our local Air Ambulance service, which is cool, because she is doing it for charity, and because helicopters rule!

Happy face.

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Tagged: becky, crunchbang, debian, ubuntu