Episode 26 - News, News Everywhere...and all about Google

Running Time: 39:46

You can find the podcast here.

1) Introduction

Check out FSDaily.com a cool new site for finding news about Free Software.

2) News

How Linux Saved the Day for a Fast food Resteraunt Running Windows

Admin Power

Google Send Shockwaves through Open source and the Tech World....In a non-evil way of course

3) Conclusion

Recommendations for People to interview

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Did you miss it? Google is trying to send Windows Packing....

While there is tons of speculation as to the real reason it is pretty clear at this point that Google real is encouraging people not to use Windows in favor of Linux and MacOSX.  There are rumors all over the map as to the reason.  The linuxinsider.com has a great rundown collection of the major rumors and a little bit of commentary.  There are also articles over at zdnet.com the Googling Google Blog trys to claim that the switch will save Google millions, like they need the money and haven't already paid for the licenses.

This is truly great news for the Linux Community.  Of course not the first major company to encourage the use of anything but Microsoft.  Novell has the majority of it's company migrated and only those who can find no alternative software are allowed to stay with it.  IBM and Cisco both allow people to choose their own PC.  Basicly they give their staff a budget and provide solutions for them to implement and support.  In the end this lowers costs and let's people work happier with the OS the picked.  It is good to hear though and I hope more companies will start looking into why they have to stick with Windows.  Especially for the IT Staff.

Google shakes things up and the aftershocks keep happening...

Last week's Google I/O conference was really impressive, if you are a developer using Google Tools that is.  They announced a bunch of new features in Android 2.2.  Not the least of these, and the one I am most excited for, Tethering on all android devices for free and out of the box.  They released Google TV, which is there attempt to bring searching for video's on the internet on your TV to my Mom and Grandma.  So Google has proven that they aren't evil when they keep all of our search data for ever.  They actually use it to figure out what it is that we all really want and need right?

They certainly seem to.  Google's biggest and most reverberating announcement of the week is the open sourcing of their recently purchased Video Codec.  They have packaged it into what they are calling WebM.  The VP8 codec isn't really the best of bread but it does seem to be the one with the least amount of problems with patents.  This is really yet to be seen.  Google has the money to take on anyone who wants to try and stop them.  The long term fear about Video Patents, as I have heard on just about every podcast and website lately, is that you will get sued for something you never would have thought was patented.  This is the excuse many companies have used not to adopt OGG Theora.  HTML 5 needs a standard for video and Google is doing everything they can to make VP8 that standard.

If adopted this would open a flood gate for companies of all sizes to do more online demos of products and services.  in theory you would be able to create one website for all platforms and have the video show up in different sizes with nearly no effort and only the hosting cost on your part.  I can see all of the future internet infomercial stars getting ready to sell us all great stuff.  Combine this with Google TV and I can finally kick caffeine to the curb and actually sleep at night because I will have the ability to look them up whenever I want. There will no longer be a worry of missing the latest must have gadgets that are sweeping the nation.

I would link to a story or two but there are so many good ones I think it's better to just search for "google webm" or "google vp8"

Will Google Fork Android from Linux?

Was doing my daily reading and ran across this article on itworld.com.  This article discusses how the drivers for Android have been removed from the Linux kernel's staging tree.  No mention of the word fork was stated in any posts, but many will wonder why do this move now?

Greg Kroah-Hartman posted a lengthy explanation stating one reason for removing the code is that no one was currently working on it. 

We will have to follow this story as it progresses further and actually see if a true fork ends up happening.

Post us some comments and let us know whether you think a fork would be good or bad?

Update on Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 1:00AM by Brian "Wags" Wagner

I found another article around this topic at h-online

Is your company thinking about developing on Android?

While doing some research for a friend I came across this article about the gripes of an Android Developer.  The list, found here, doesn't have anything I would consider a show stopper but I don't expect everyone to agree with me.  Before you start or decide to start developing on Android this is a great list of warnings and things to think about.