Why this Blog

I feel that the first question that should be asked when someone writes a blog is WHY.

In my case this is quite simple. in the course of several years I have posted countless comments, rants and opinions on other technology sites and blogs. Be it "The register", "Ars Technica", "Lilliputing" or one of the countless other places I frequent on the web, I left my mark in their comment systems. When I Googled my name recently it returned more than 500 entries, however it is extremely difficult to actually regroup them, and in several cases I said the same thing in different places. I think it is now time to group my musings in one place and leverage this wonder of the web that is called THE LINK.

Great! That place is here.

Now some of you have probably also noticed that the title of my blog speaks about media. In the course of the same years I have become very interested in what i would call the new media: the vodcasts, the podcasts, Youtube, iTunes, Miro. I even have my own monthly Video podcast (in French) and I am very interested in the creation (and consumption) of video and other entertainment on the web, so be assured that these are subjects I will blog about regularly.

Netbook market share is a question of semantics

So it seems that Linux is losing some market share in the Netbook space.

Well, I think that one of the issues is that a lot of "Netbook" manufactures tend to push mini-laptops instead of real netbooks.

The original EEEPC 701 with its small screen and 4 GB SSD was not suitable for windows: not enough storage, screen too small etc... But it was cheap and ideal for mobile surfing, at true Netbook.

Now most manufacturer are producing mini laptops with 10 inch screens and hard disk. The customers expectation for these is to have a full laptop functionality in a smaller package, not Netbook functionality, and a such a Linux OS designed for Netbooks is not successful.

Manufacturers should bundle a full blown Ubuntu with these instead of Xandros or Linpus.
I think Linuxes (and android) will make a comeback when manufacturers start again to release real Netbooks bases on the ARM architecture: light inexpensive machines designed for surfing.
Its all a question of semantics: what do you consider a Netbook? If a netbooks is a atom base computer with an SSD and a 7 to 9 inch screen, then I am sure the Linux market share is quite high, but then the overall Netbook market share is smaller.

On the price of mobile bandwidth

So someone in the US went wild on his 3G connection and racked a huge bill without realising what he was doing.

What I find amazing is that the American public don't expect to have to pay for bandwidth.

I live in Europe (Belgium) and these potential surcharges on mobile broadband are indeed the norm here. Actually, getting a 5 GB cap on mobile broadband is extremely generous by European standards. To give you an idea by my provider offers 3 plans: the entry level data plan offers 10 MB (yes MEGAbytes) per month for like 7$, the medium data plan offers 200 MBs (again MEGAbytes) for around $12, and the top end plan offers 2 full GBs and cost around $30. This cost is in addition of your voice plan.

For the first 2 plans (10 Mb & 200 Mb month) any traffic beyond the quota is charger $3 per MB (again, yes $3 per MEGAbyte of data). People on the 2 GB plan that go beyond the allocated bandwidth only pay $0.12 per MB).
So if you have one of the small plans and you download 1 GB of data you can easily get a bill in the thousand of $.
This has always been like that and is the reason why very few people use mobile data for anything beyond checking mail and light surfing. Even on the big plan people know that applications like web radio and Youtube should be used in moderation if at all.

This price and usage difference between mobile internet and real broadband is something of which everybody is aware because this is VERY clearly stated in the pricing structure. Operators have realised that if someone isn't aware of this and go mad whit his mobile internet, they tend to refuse to pay the big bill that comes afterward. An operator that puts these things in the fine print is just stupid.

Best of Tech-no-media

Tech-no-media is an opinion Blog on technology, open sources and digital media. You will see below a sample of some of my best posts. If you like what you see and would like to read more feel free to subscribe to Tech-no-Media (rss) or to Follow me on Twitter.

Microsoft reminds us that Windows is f*cking expensive
Microsoft has finally released the pricing structure for Windows 7. The good news is that the new version of Windows will be a bit cheaper than the equivalent version of Windows Vista. The bad news is that since I am now used to receiving Ubuntu for free this made me realize that a Windows 7 license is in fact f*cking expensive!
Image cc by impressa.maccabe

Linux Netbooks: back to the facts
There has been a lot of talk about the success or failure of the Linux netbooks recently, to the point that it is now a very controversial topic. I think that it is time to go back to the facts and perform an objective analysis of the Linux netbook market. You will see that Linux netbooks have been neither a complete success nor a complete failure.
Picture cc by magicfab

Taking Gloria out for a spin: A review of Linux Mint 7.0
There is a soft spot in my heart for Linux Mint: Mint 3.0 was the first Linux distribution that I really used rather than experimented with. Since then I have moved on to Ubuntu (on which Mint is based), but the release of the new Linux Mint 7.0 codenamed Gloria made me want to install and review Linux Mint again. I brought my old Dell latitude D400, a 5 year old subnotebook, out of storage and started the Mint live CD.

MS vs EU: Microsoft does not control Windows anymore
I was quite surprised when I learned that some peoples at JCXP wanted to boycott the opera browser because of the EU actions against Microsoft regarding the bundling of IE 8. The problem is that their main argument would be valid in the US, but absolutely not in the EU. Here is the point that I have a problem with:

"Microsoft is entirely within their right to include Internet Explorer as the default browser within their own OS, just like Apple includes their own Safari as the default browser in Mac OS X, and just like Opera Software would be free to include Opera as the default browser in their own OS, should they ever make one."


An interview with Clem from Linux Mint
A few days ago I reviewed what is in my opinion the easiest Linux distribution for Windows switchers: Linux Mint 7.0 The small group of talented people that manage this distribution is led by Clem, the "founder" of Linux Mint. Today he was kind enough to grant me an email interview as a follow up to my review.

Erlik: How did you get started on Linux Mint?

Clem: I've been passionate about Linux since the early days. I started using it as my main operating system in 1996. In the following years I did a lot of distro-hopping and I spent a lot of time helping other users. In 2006 I started selling reviews and...

Why Android smartbooks will eventually be free
We have seen a lot of action at Computex around the Snapdragon based android eeepc and all the shenanigans around it. I think however that this is an operation by netbook manufacturers to make Microsoft realize what we already know: that they should give Windows 7 starter away for free. Given the number of manufacturers preparing Android and Snapdragon Based devices Asus can't afford to miss the boat. I also think that the new Android smartbooks will not only be cheap, but that eventually they will be free and I'll explain why below. image cc by nDevilTV

How to choose the best netbook computer?
Choosing the best netbook computer based on your intended usage is very different from choosing the best notebook computer. In the notebook world there are many screen sizes, price points and processor speeds. If judged by notebook standards all netbooks look the same: same 9 to 10 inch screen, same 1.6 GHz Atom processors, same $300 to $500 price point.

The netbook processor wars: Atom x86 versus snapdragon ARM
War is brewing in Netbook processor land. The current king of the hill is the Intel Atom CPU based on the x86 instruction set, the same instruction set that is used in "full size" laptops and desktops. The only contender that Intel faced in the Netbook space up to now was the VIA Nano, which didn't have much success up to now. The Nano is somewhat more powerful than the Atom, but it also consume more power, a major problem in a market where battery life is more critical than processing power.

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Ars on the state of the eBook market

This is a very good article on Ars Technica about the state of the eBook market.

I used to read quite a lot of Baen books on my palm, and I still do it to some extent, but it has diminished for several reasons:

- First Baen seems to be the only publisher that offers books in DRM free multiformat, so I only bought from that one publisher, which is somewhat limiting.

- Second there are a lot of other media competing for my reading time. Music, Video, Games (Nintendo DS) and short stories webzines published for free on the web (such as Aphelion) all compete with professional eBooks for my time.

5 years ago you couldn't get a satisfactory Video or gaming experience in a pocket format, now most PMPs and portable games consoles deliver this. the problem for publishers is that these compete with eBooks AND printed sales. This doesn't mean I won't buy eBooks from Baen again (I still look at their new offerings from time to time), but this means that book publishers really need to get their act straightened up or they will lose even their printed market.

I think the publishers that get it will get a decent market share however. After all, if you count the eBooks I bought more novels from Baen Books that from any other publisher in the last 10 years.